A knack for meaty roles
The Hollywood star strives hard to give depth to every character he plays, including the graphic novel villain of his latest outing
It's an actor's job to put flesh and bones on a character and bring it to life. But what if that character is a two-dimensional comic book creation? According to Kevin Bacon, who portrayed the power-hungry Sebastian Shaw in X-Men: First Class, and now plays a bad cop in R.I.P.D., a supernatural action comedy based on a graphic novel, the process is no different.
Research, back story, and finding human elements to latch on to still come into play. "I try to humanise comic book characters, to make them real," the actor says.
I try to think about where they are from and what their life was like before we meet them; I look inside them and find out what makes them tick
"I tend to approach them in the same way that I approach any other character. I try to think about where they are from and what their life was like before we meet them; I look inside them and find out what makes them tick."
Bacon has a somewhat illustrious career behind him, mainly as a supporting actor. The 55-year-old pops up all over the place: as a villain in the thriller The River Wild (1994); a Nixon honcho in Frost/Nixon (2008); a gay prostitute in JFK (1991); and as a paedophile in The Woodsman (2004).
The 1982 ensemble film Diner, directed by Barry Levinson, got him noticed, and the 1984 musical movie Footloose made him famous. He has worked with so many people that he has given his name to the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon parlour game, in which players try to connect an actor to another actor in a chain involving Bacon.
Bacon's latest outing, R.I.P.D. - which stands for "Rest in Peace Department", and is based on the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel of the same name by Peter M. Lenkov - is about a couple of dead cops sent back to earth to rid it of monsters and zombies, known as "deados", who have managed to scheme their way back from hell.
Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds play the dead cops, while Bacon essays a saturnine villain with some extremely nasty personality traits.