What's it like to navigate the world without a famous face? Actor Kevin Bacon decided to find out, embarking on a fascinating experiment where he used a full prosthetic disguise to experience a day of total anonymity. The results, however, were far from what he anticipated.
In interviews with outlets like The Guardian and on The Graham Norton Show, Bacon detailed the elaborate process. He hired a special effects makeup artist to make him completely unrecognizable, then set out to do something he normally couldn't: walk through The Grove, a busy Los Angeles mall, without being noticed.
While the disguise worked perfectly, the novelty of being invisible quickly soured. Bacon was shocked to discover that the warmth and courtesy he was accustomed to had vanished. "People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice," he recalled.
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The small privileges of fame, which he had perhaps taken for granted, were suddenly gone. He was no longer a beloved actor; he was just another person in a crowd, and the shift was jarring. "Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to buy a f**king coffee or whatever," he said.
Kevin Bacon at the Cannes film festival in 2004Georges Biard via Wikimedia Commons
His conclusion from the experiment was swift and unambiguous. "I was like, ‘This sucks. I want to go back to being famous,'" Bacon admitted.
Gif of Kevin Bacon in "Foot Loose"
The experience gave him a profound new appreciation for the life his career had afforded him. He realized that the benefits of fame weren't just about avoiding lines, but about a baseline of kindness he received from strangers. "Being recognizable is 99.9% good because people are nice to you for absolutely no reason," he explained. The random "I love you" from a fan was no longer just a perk; it was a cherished interaction. "Who doesn’t want to be loved?" he added.
Ultimately, his quest for anonymity led him to an unexpected discovery: a deep gratitude for the very recognition he had tried to escape.
This article originally appeared earlier this year. It has been updated.
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