Kevin Bacon on collaborating with his wife, playing a sex object and his resurrection of a long-ago role

The actor stars in Kyra Sedgwick's directorial debut, 'Story of a Girl', which is out on Lifetime, playing a gay boss of a pizzeria who helps a young girl after a leaked sex tape

Kevin Bacon in 'Story of a Girl', which is directed by his wife Kyra Sedgwick (Bettina Strauss)

After nearly three decades of marriage, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick don’t believe in leaving their work on the studio lot. So when Sedgwick prepared for her directorial debut with Lifetime’s Story of a Girl, which is broadcast on Sunday, she not only asked Bacon for his opinion about the project but also cast him in it.

But not long into shooting, she told him to back off. “People are extremely tapped into trying to get an inside look at our relationship, and she wanted to make sure that the crew understood that she was in charge,” Bacon says. “And so she said, ‘You’ve got to just cool it with the taking-over thing.’ And I heard her loud and clear.”

In Story of a Girl, Ryann Shane plays a teenager battered by slut-shaming in the three years since a sex video she made at 13 went viral. Hoping to rectify her past, she takes a job at a pizzeria owned by Bacon’s character, a fatherly straight shooter with secrets of his own.

Bacon, 59 – good-naturedly waving to gawkers beyond a conference room window – talked about collaborating with his wife, his latest turn as a sex object and his resurrection of a long-ago role.

‘Story of a Girl’ director Kyra Sedgwick with husband Bacon, who stars in her directorial debut (Roy Rochlin/Getty) (Getty Images)

You’ve directed Kyra in Losing Chase, Loverboy and The Closer. How did she come to direct you?

I have been pounding the table for a long time. She understands one of the critical pieces that direction is, which is someone that creates an environment where the actors can do their homework, make choices and feel supported and enabled.

So she felt she had to rein you in?

It’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut. And if you have a couple that’s going to be working together on the set, everybody’s knee-jerk reaction is that it’s going to be problematic. People just can’t wait for that. “Ooo, what’s going on?” There’s a lot of jokes: Now he’s ordering her around, now she’s ordering him around.

In Amazon’s I Love Dick, you play an artist in Marfa, Texas, who unwittingly becomes the fantasy and muse for a filmmaker played by Kathryn Hahn.

Bacon in Amazon’s ‘I Love Dick’ (Amazon)

I was fascinated with the idea that this man created his celebrity in this very small pond where he knew he could become the biggest fish. Most famous people have devoted their lives to acquiring that, and you don’t necessarily know how that’s going to feel until you get it, and it may not be all it’s cracked up to be. And I think Dick is at a point in his life where he’s almost sickened by the whole thing.

Are you comfortable with fame?

I always point out that it’s 99 per cent good. People will smile when they see me, or they’ll tell me that they love me. That’s not the worst thing in the course of your day. New York is probably the easiest place for me to be as long as I stay away from Midtown, because if a tourist sees you then you are part of the tour.

How about with being the target of such an intense female gaze?

Sedgwick is best known as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama ‘The Closer’ (http://dvdbash.wordpress.com/)

When it comes to the fantasy pieces of it, it’s my job. But it’s also a collaboration between where the camera is and the way that I’m dressed and the way I look, the hair and the makeup and music. Being sexy, it’s not really actable.

At one point you’re watching Kathryn and Griffin Dunne’s characters have sex.

They called me to the set, and there’s Kathryn and Griffin in their bathrobes. And then Kathryn says: “All right, hang onto your hat, pal. We’ll see you on the other side.” I sat down in my chair as Dick, and the music starts, and here come these two naked people dancing across with our cameraman, and all three of them fly into the bed. And every once in a while he pans off to see me reacting, and what I really wanted to do was laugh hysterically just because it was so (expletive) funny.

Kathryn’s character writes you lust letters. Have you ever received one in real life?

If I have, it’s been kept from me somehow.

Syfy has greenlighted a Tremors pilot that picks up 25 years after your 1990 film left off.

I liked the idea that [my character] Valentine McKee, this very, very ordinary man, was thrown into this extraordinary situation where he has to truly become a hero. And what happens to this guy’s life if, after that one moment, nothing is ever quite as intense? But they come back! Believe me: We’re going to have monsters.

Other reboots of Tremors have failed. What makes you think you can succeed?

Uhh – I’m in it?

‘Story of a Girl’ is out now on Lifetime

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