going to want to see everything
that that person does. That’s
not me.”
Say what you will of the
concept of the “three Gs” (“I
made it up, just now,” he says
with a grin, when I tell him
it’s clever), Bacon’s notorious
ubiquity across three decades
in Hollywood is surprising,
if only because he’s held the
place at arm’s length for years.
He never wanted to live in
Los Angeles. And so he and his
wife, the actor and director
Kyra Sedgwick, who married
in 1988, raised their two
children, Travis and Sosie, in
New York City. Both Bacon
and Sedgwick, as he tells me,
“defined ourselves” by never
going all in on Hollywood, by
steering clear of all that.
But as we stood under
the cherry blossoms in Central
Park, he tells me that they’re
finally relenting. After decades
of resisting, Bacon and Sedgwick
have bought a place on the
east side of Los Angeles and are
spending more time there.
Sosie is a working actor in
L.A. herself now, and Travis,
a black-metal musician, is
also moving to California.
Perhaps Bacon planned such
a cinematic New York day
for us because he is trying to
capture something that he
knows may be slipping away.
We talk a bit about his
earliest days as an actor and
how his motivations morphed.
When he started acting as a
teenager, Bacon says, “I was
super into being famous and
wealthy. And, frankly, I know
you hear it all the time, and I
know it probably gets a little
old, but I really thought that it
would be a way to get girls.”
But over time, he realized
that the shiny side of celebrity
felt empty to him. “What I
learned in the long run is that
what I love, love, love is the
time between ‘action’ and ‘cut,’”
he says. “I love the work. I
mean, I really do. On my worst
day, I fucking love it.... If
anything, I’ve never learned to
be—what’s the word?—cynical
about the possibilities for any
kind of success around a
AUGUST 2019 GQ.COM 101
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