(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 21 December 2025 1:00, UK
It’s a broad generalisation, but acting is a total crapshoot. There are no guarantees that a movie will be a seismic hit, just like it’s impossible to tell which roles will become iconic. Kevin Bacon has turned down at least one of each, possibly two, if his memory hadn’t failed him.
For the last four decades, the star has been a ubiquitous presence in film and television, playing a number of memorable parts in a collection of award-winning, acclaimed, and successful films, while also weathering the storms of several flops that had the potential to derail his career entirely.
Bacon isn’t quite what you’d call an A-list movie star, but he’s also too famous to be known as a character actor. It’s an unusual spot for anyone to find themselves in, and he wonders if that’s the reason why he continues to hover around the conversation for the best actors to have never been nominated for an Academy Award.
He’s never been in a movie that’s won ‘Best Picture’, despite popping up in a few nominees like Apollo 13, JFK, and Mystic River, but he could have been if he hadn’t turned down the chance to play Lieutenant Dan in Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump, one of the defining titles of the 1990s.
He’s never been in a movie that’s earned more than $500 million at the box office, either, with X-Men: First Class his top-grosser at $355 million. He’d have added one to the collection had he not passed on Forrest Gump, and there may even have been a second, although he isn’t quite sure if that’s the case or not.
In his defence, not only was it a long time ago, but he was far from the only one who said no. Bruce Willis, Michael J Fox, and Harrison Ford all rejected overtures to play Sam Wheat in Jerry Zucker’s Ghost before Patrick Swayze was cast, which is just as well when the Dirty Dancing favourite said he was ready to kill in order to land the part for himself.
Almost every known actor in Bacon’s age range and salary bracket was under consideration, and with three and half decades passing since the casting process got underway, he’s not sure if he declined it or not. “I don’t think I would have turned it down,” he mused to Insider. “I have no memory of that.”
It was widely reported at the time that he had, so maybe he’s wiped it from his memory. Either that, or he genuinely can’t recall if he did or didn’t knock it back, not that he regrets it. “By the way, the other piece of that is Ghost without Patrick Swayze? I don’t know,” he added. “It could have gone nowhere.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone other than Swayze making sensual spectral pottery with Demi Moore, and would the movie have cleared half a billion dollars at the box office, won two Oscars, earned a ‘Best Picture’ nod, and ended its theatrical run as the third top-earning release in cinema history with Bacon in the lead? Maybe, maybe not.
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