Kevin Bacon Answers the Proust Questionnaire

What is your idea of perfect happiness? A family dinner. Candlelight. Lots of laughs.

What is your favorite journey? The last leg of any journey home.

What do you dislike most about your appearance? My nose looks like a two-car garage.

What or who is the greatest love of your life? She’s in the next room.

What is your most marked characteristic? I guess the two-car garage. Let’s put it this way: If I’m walking through a crowd and want to avoid being recognized, I just cover my nose. No doubt your caricature will be featuring it.

Which historical figure do you most identify with? I truly don’t think about historical figures that much. Maybe it’s no accident that I’ve rarely played one.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? Probably our first dog. Her name was Jane. Pretty great life. Free spirit. Although she was accident-prone.

What is your greatest fear? Food in a sink drain.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself ? I can’t stand the way my voice will crack if I’m making a speech. I hate public speaking and the emotion it dredges up.

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Lying. Let’s not call it “untruthful.” Or “factually inaccurate.” I don’t even call it bullshit, because I like bulls. And bulls need to shit. So you can’t hold that against them. Let’s call it what it is: lying.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Physical appearance.

On what occasion do you lie? Sometimes it’s necessary backstage, after a screening, or when someone just played a song for you.

Which living person do you most despise? It’s a growing list, but I wouldn’t write it here as we live in an age of weaponized retribution.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “Like” as in “I was, like…” What does that even mean? It’s noncommittal.

What is your greatest regret? Not practicing the guitar.

When and where were you happiest? I have to believe that my happiest days are ahead of me. Otherwise the future looks shifting, even in the flash of a moment: anxious, excited, peaceful, hopeful, and back to anxious.

What is it that you most dislike? Questions about our marriage. I hate to take decades of partnership and distill it into a sound bite.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? My family.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be? I’m going to take this opportunity to say I don’t want to come back! I don’t believe I will. I want to do my best while I’m here because I believe that when I’m gone, I’m gone.

What is your most treasured possession? I guess an old guitar? But I’m not too attached to possessions.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Whenever I see a parent who has lost a child to war or shootings or disease, that seems like unimaginable misery.

What do you most value in your friends? They want nothing but friendship.

Who are your favorite writers? Cormac McCarthy, Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen King.

How would you like to die? Without pain.

What are your favorite names? Travis and Sosie. I’m not kidding. I love these names. They also happen to be our kids’ names. We got the names off crew lists of movies that Kyra was shooting while pregnant.