Data piece finds Kevin Bacon ranks 175th as Hollywood's most connected actor
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The gist
A data study found American actor Kevin Bacon sits 2.28 degrees from the average actor, ranking 175th in Hollywood.
Samuel L. Jackson tops the list, undercutting the game's premise that Bacon is the center.
Background
Kevin Bacon is an American actor born July 8, 1958, in Philadelphia, known for a wide range of film roles including Footloose (1984). The "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" is a game in which players try to connect any actor to Bacon in fewer than six steps, each step linking two actors who co-starred in a film. The data publication The Pudding tested that premise by scoring actors' "remoteness" — how many degrees, on average, they sit from a given actor — across a 169,000-actor dataset.
How it unfolded
- Jul 8, 1958Kevin Bacon is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
- Oct 18, 2026An article on Bacon's most memorable co-stars and collaborators is published, noting he is now in his sixth decade as a Hollywood actor.
- Oct 20, 2026The Pudding publishes the interactive data piece "The Real Kevin Bacon," calculating actors' remoteness scores and testing the game's premise.
Who’s saying what
- Analysts
- The Pudding found Bacon's remoteness is 2.28, ranking him 175th among Hollywood actors, with Samuel L. Jackson the true center at 2.09.
- Analysts
- The Pudding reported women hold only 16 of the top 100 spots, with Nicole Kidman the highest-ranking woman at #21.
- Public
- Yardbarker noted Bacon has done just about every kind of movie imaginable, playing both heroes and villains.
Still unverified
The Pudding's projected future contenders for the center of Hollywood — led by Chloë Grace Moretz at 11.6% of wins — come from 10,000 simulations of 99 Gen Z actors, not actual results.