Bacon's puppy-dog looks made him a teen idol and an inescapable supporting actor. And as everyone who lived through 1997 knows, he's connected to you by six degrees of separation or less.

The son of prominent Philadelphia city planner Edmund Bacon, Kevin landed small parts in Guiding Light and Animal House, before impressing critics in Barry Levinson's Diner in 1982. But it was his performance as happy-footed rebel Ren McCormack in the 1984 smash Footloose that made him more than a breakfast side dish. Earning rave reviews and comparisons to James Dean, Bacon went on to a career as a hugely successful supporting actor with appearances in Flatliners, JFK, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Mystic River, and Frost/Nixon.

Bacon went from omnipresent character actor to pop-culture icon in the late '90s, when fans noted that his lengthy resume meant that he could be connected to nearly every actor on earth. Thus was born the goofy road-trip game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and its website The Oracle of Bacon. Bacon married fellow actor Kyra Sedgwick in 1988. They have two children: Travis, who was born in 1989; and Sosie, who was born in 1992. [Image via Getty]