Many celebrities complain about the lack of privacy that comes with fame, particularly about being virtually unable to walk down the street without being recognised. Not Kevin Bacon, however, who says he couldn’t imagine going back to being anonymous!

The 58 year old Hollywood legend stopped by ‘The Graham Norton Show’ this week, to film an episode of the chat show which goes out on Friday (May 5th). Speaking about the subject of fame and universal recognisability, Bacon said that he found the experience of being not stopped by fans in the street when he went shopping in disguise one time as “awful”.

Kevin BaconKevin Bacon says he loves being recognised by people in the street

“People don’t talk about the fact that being recognisable is 99.9% good and people are nice to you. People stop me in the street to say they love me, and who doesn’t want to be loved?” the former Footloose star said.

“It’s mostly good, but once in a while you ask yourself what it would be like to walk through the world anonymously so I decided to experiment with that. I had a disguise made by a special effects make-up artist and I walked through The Grove shopping mall in California, which is the worst place if you are celebrity.”

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“But nobody recognised me! It was awful! I thought, ‘This sucks and I’m going back to Kevin Bacon asap!’”

The star is promoting his current series, ‘I Love Dick’, which also features Kathryn Hahn and is being launched on Amazon later this month.

He said that being famous of course has its drawbacks from time to time, but that it also comes in handy on at least as many occasions. “I was driving on the border of Oklahoma and Texas and the towns come up fast and furious and I guess I was going faster than the speed limit,” he recalled on one occasion.

“I got pulled over and the police officer asked me to step out of the car. There might have been a little contraband in the car so my heart rate was starting to climb. He then asked me to get in his car and we just sat there for a while. Finally he said, 'I want you to know that the first date I ever had was to Footloose. I just got a warning!”

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