‘The best is yet to come for me’

Kevin Bacon is 67. He’s won a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards, earned an Emmy nomination and starred in more than 90 films and TV projects. He could be happily retired, having accomplished more than most actors his age, collecting Social Security or flashing a senior discount at the movies. Instead, he’s got his “foot on the gas pedal.”

“Listen, I love what I do. I love it. Love it,” Bacon tells Yahoo. “I hear a lot of people my age — or even 10 years younger — saying, ‘It’s time to slow down, I want to slow it down.’ I don’t.”

Now, Bacon is having a blast playing the delightfully deranged villain in The Toxic Avenger, a weird, wild and surprisingly timely reimagining of the cult classic. But if you think the actor is content to coast on his legacy or take it easy after almost five decades in the business, think again. He’s always hunting for his next challenge — onscreen and off.

“It’s about playing,” Bacon says. “It’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, before I even knew what being an actor was or being a musician or performer. Just to get a chance to play has been … I just have so much gratitude for it.”

Running wild

While many actors of his generation have gravitated toward legacy roles or Hollywood comfort zones, Bacon has chosen something different: a life rooted in adventure, play and (most days) a little fresh air. He splits his time between sets and a 40-acre farm in Sharon, Conn., where he and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, who have been married for 37 years, tend to a menagerie of animals — mini cows included — and escape the grind.

“I’m a city kid and my children were raised in the city, but reconnecting with animals, for whatever reason, it’s always been a thing for me,” he says. “Ever since I was a little boy, I wanted to have a horse. I’m not really sure why. I know that my dad didn’t like dogs, so we were never allowed to have pets in the house. I had a couple of rats, but that was as far as it got.”

That urge only grew as Bacon got older.

“The second I left home, I got a dog, and by the time I was probably 28 or 29, I had a horse,” he says. He bought the farm in 1983 and says the slow pace of day-to-day life is “just something I like.”

“I find that — you’ve heard it a million times, and there are plenty of people who use animals for therapy — but I do find it very therapeutic to be around them, to be around their breathing, to just spend time with them,” he says.

In his villain era

Of course, peace and quiet can only last so long. For all the slow mornings and steady routines, Bacon is still drawn to a little bit of madness — at least when the cameras roll.

In The Toxic Avenger, he plays Bob Garbinger, a power-hungry corporate titan who’ll stop at nothing to protect his empire. He’s a modern-day villain with a larger-than-life personality, outrageous fashion and zero moral compass.

It’s a role Bacon relished — one that let him tap into a different kind of energy than the one he brings to his day-to-day life. “It was a great part, and I think that it was certainly on the page,” he says. “[Director] Macon Blair is one of those people who welcomes you into the fold and encourages you to go as far as you can with the part.”

Bacon says he approached Garbinger just like he would any other character.

“I don’t tend to play the tone of the movie, although it was clear that the movie was going to be kind of over-the-top. For me, the research and the process that I go through is pretty much the same as it would be for somebody like Bob as it would be for just a regular guy. In this case, I have to tap into something that is kind of insane and just go for it.”

So where did Bacon find inspiration for this unhinged antagonist?

“If I copped to that, a lot of people would probably be very offended,” he says with a laugh. The only clue Bacon offers is that he was thinking about exaggerated figures with a hold on people, like televangelists. Channeling that kind of outsize energy became the perfect template for his performance.

“Nowadays, you have people with very large personalities who also happen to be in the corporate world. That didn’t used to be the case. It used to be people behind the scenes in dark rooms, smoking cigars. They didn’t want to be seen; that wasn’t part of the corporate experience. Now it’s much more right in your face.”

Kevin Bacon on Kevin Bacon

Bacon’s ability to slip into any role — hero, villain, farmhand — has always been his superpower. For all the genre-hopping, what’s kept him going isn’t reinvention for reinvention’s sake; it’s the sheer joy of the work.

If there’s a thread connecting his many characters, it’s the sense that Bacon never phones it in. Another thing he’s not phoning in? His love of cinema. The actor’s movie recommendations have become a trademark of his social media presence, where he and Sedgwick talk about their favorite new releases.

Bacon has good taste — and that also extends to the roles he’s taken on throughout his storied career.

What is clear from our conversation is that for Bacon, every project is a new challenge, a new chance to play, and he attacks each one with the same youthful energy that made him famous in the first place. He doesn’t cling to the past, nor does he have much interest in standing still.

As he looks ahead, Bacon is as energized as ever — ready to shape-shift again, take risks and dive into whatever madness comes next.

“The best is yet to come for me,” he says. “That’s the way I feel, or at least that’s my dream.”

Looking for more recs? Find your next watch on the Yahoo 100, our daily updating list of the most popular movies of the year.