Kevin Bacon’s John Hughes Hail Mary Was Meant to Save His Career, but Almost Nobody Showed Up

For most of the last 40 years, Kevin Bacon has been one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. He was so ubiquitous in the ’90s that the party game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ was built around him, and today he’s a respected character actor known for supporting parts, villains and unusual roles. Yet his career didn’t always follow that path, and the story of the Kevin Bacon film that was meant to save his career is a fascinating bit of ’80s history.

Back in the late 1980s, Hollywood saw him as the next big leading man. He had arrived alongside the Brat Pack generation of stars, and expectations were high. What happened next is a classic case of a young actor zigging when the industry wanted him to zag.

Bacon made his feature debut in ‘National Lampoon’s Animal House’ in 1978, then broke out with ‘Diner’ and became a household name with ‘Footloose’ in 1984. The dance drama was a smash, and he even landed on the cover of People magazine. Studios were ready to build a career around him.

But Bacon wasn’t comfortable being a heartthrob. He deliberately chose offbeat projects that cut against that image, a decision he has described as a career slump of his own making. While contemporaries like Tom Cruise, Sean Penn and Rob Lowe rocketed to superstardom, Bacon turned down the kind of hits that defined the decade.

Instead of starring in films like ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’, ‘Top Gun’ or ‘Young Guns’, he made ‘Quicksilver’, ‘White Water Summer’ and ‘End of the Line’. The last of those barely registered, earning just $42,000 at the box office. By 1988, his chance of becoming an A-list star was in serious trouble.

That’s when a lifeline appeared. John Hughes, fresh off a string of hits, offered him the lead in ‘She’s Having a Baby’, a deeply personal project drawn from Hughes’ own early years in advertising and family life. Bacon played Jake Briggs, a young copywriter who narrates the story alongside Elizabeth McGovern, with Alec Baldwin in a supporting role.

On paper, it looked like a perfect comeback. Hughes had just delivered one smash after another, and Bacon even took a cameo in ‘Planes, Trains & Automobiles’ as a taxi racer, an idea he pitched himself because he wanted to be part of Hughes’ circle. That film was released in November 1987 to rapturous reviews and strong ticket sales.

‘She’s Having a Baby’ arrived in February 1988 with a very different fate. Paramount reportedly lost faith in it and released it into a market still dominated by holiday hits like ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’, ‘Three Men and a Baby’ and ‘Moonstruck’. It grossed about $16 million in the United States against a $20 million budget and received mixed reviews, with Roger Ebert awarding it 2 out of 4 stars.

The failure stung on both sides. For Hughes, who had been known for teen comedies, it was an attempt at something more grown-up that didn’t connect, and some writers see it as a turning point in his career. For Bacon, it was his last real shot at being a conventional leading man at that stage.

What makes the story more interesting is that Bacon has never turned his back on the movie. He has said he is proud of it and sees it as one of the best things he did, and he has even called it Hughes’ best film. That loyalty shows how much he believed in it.

Bacon’s career didn’t end there. In fact, the slump pushed him toward more interesting work. He later recalled having a breakdown over the idea of making ‘Tremors’, a movie about underground worms, and yet that film became a cult favorite in 1990.

From there came ‘Flatliners’, ‘A Few Good Men’, ‘Apollo 13’, ‘Mystic River’ and ‘Hollow Man’, along with many roles that showed his range. The path from near-obscurity to respected veteran suggests that missing out on superstardom may have helped him become something more durable.

Looking back, ‘She’s Having a Baby’ feels like a movie that was ahead of its time or perhaps just misunderstood, depending on who you ask. It certainly didn’t save Bacon’s career in the way people hoped, but it did help define his determination to follow his own instincts.

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