Kevin Bacon Once Disguised Himself as a ‘Regular Person’ for a Day and Realized ‘This Sucks’

When Kevin Bacon was able to transform into a “regular person,” he realized that the grass was greener for him on the other side.

The Footloose actor, 65, revealed that he used to daydream about walking life a normal person, so much so that he committed to hiring a team for an elaborate disguise, according to a Vanity Fair interview published July 3.

“I’m not complaining, but I have a face that’s pretty recognizable,” he said in the story, titled, “Kevin Bacon Spent a Day as a Regular Person.”

“Putting my hat and glasses on is only going to work to a certain extent,” Bacon said of his plot. “I went to a special effects makeup artist, had consultations, and asked him to make me a prosthetic disguise.”

After getting fitted with fake teeth, a different nose and a pair of glasses, Bacon tested out his look at Los Angeles shopping hot spot The Grove.

“Nobody recognized me,” he recalled. Though his plan worked, the actor realized that he had rendered himself somewhat invisible.

“People were kind of pushing past me, not being nice,” he said. “Nobody said, ‘I love you.’ I had to wait in line to, I don’t know, buy a fucking coffee or whatever. I was like, This sucks. I want to go back to being famous.”

Throughout his career, Bacon has gone on to receive countless of accolades and starred in many films. Hollywood has gone as far to create the “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon” game, which suggests that anyone involved in the industry could trace their roles back to him in six steps.

While he no longer holds any contempt for the game, Bacon admitted that he was initially offended by its premise during an appearance on The Corp podcast in 2019.

He thought, “ ‘They’re making fun of me.’ I’m an actor. Exactly. I thought the joke was, ‘Can you believe that such a lightweight could be connected to Laurence Olivier or Meryl Streep or whatever in six steps or less?’ ”

“That’s just the actor’s insecurity,” he continued. “That’s how I felt.”

When Bacon announced his podcast Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon in 2023, he revealed that he now feels a sense a pride about it and explained that he adopted a new mindset: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

“I just kind of figured it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and so there’s very little for me to do about it,” Bacon told PEOPLE at the time. “The first time that I ever really embraced it, I think was with the foundation.”

“I’ve said this before, and I really truly believe this: The thing about ‘Six Degrees’ is you got to take me out of it,” he added. “If you take me out of it, the concept is actually beautiful, because it shows that we are all connected — and not only are we connected, but we hunger for connections.”