Kevin Bacon on Overcoming Self-Sabotage, Manifesting His Dreams, and the Key to His 35 Year Marriage

0:00My friend, I am such a big believer that your mindset is everything. It can really dictate if your life has meaning, has value, and you feel fulfilled, or if you feel exhausted, drained, and like you're never going to be enough. Our brand new book, The Greatness Mindset, just hit the New York Times bestseller, Back to Back Weeks. And I'm so excited to hear from so many of you who've bought the book, who've read it, and finished it already, and are getting incredible results from the lessons in the book. If you haven't got a copy yet, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward.

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1:31There's that. And then there's also trying to get better and trying to get another part that's even more challenging. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

2:04Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I am very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring, the iconic, the legendary Kevin Bacon in the house. Good to see you, sir, and thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. I live in Los Angeles, and I've been here for about 10 years. And I remember when the first year I moved here, maybe it's been 12 years now, the first year I moved here, I saw you. I saw you. We were eating at some restaurant in, I can't remember, West Hollywood somewhere. And I remember seeing you and I remember thinking, this is one of the most connected men in the industry, in this city, and probably in this world.

2:40I was probably connected to my pasta at that moment. Exactly. You were connected. I can't remember. You were with someone having a meeting or something and no one interrupted you, which was nice to see. But I remember saying, this guy has done a lot of amazing things as a musician, as an actor, as an artist, as a creative human being. But beyond that, you've really built incredible relationships with people. And for over three decades, you've been extremely successful because, in my opinion, not only that you have this incredible talent and gift as an artist, but because you treat people well, people speak highly of you, you connect people, you're of service to people.

3:18and that's one of the things that I really respect and appreciate about you. Obviously, I don't know you, but that's your reputation of being a good, kind human being while also being an iconic superstar, I think is really hard to find. And so I'm just grateful that you have led that way and led that path. And I'm curious, did you always think about building relationships and connecting early on before you got into your career? Or was it more like, let me drive my talent, become the best musician I can be, become the best artist I can be, and then realize that relationships and networking and actually being kind and generous to others was going to help me in my career?

4:02Well, I guess I would say that it's a little bit of a combination, although the being kind part is not something that I actively think about or pursue. You know, my mother was a very kind person. And I think my father was also, while he was an intensely self-involved person, and I got that from him, he also, you know, was fundamentally a kind person. and was kind and respectful to the people that he would meet. So it's not even something that I go, I wake up every day and go, hey, you know, let's try to be compassionate and, you know, understanding of what other people's positions may be. It's not something that I think about.

4:59It's just something that was kind of inherently there from my parents. And, you know, that being said, listen, you know, I have moods. I reach my limits. I've blown people off. I, you know, in another situation, you know, someone will say, come up to me and say, you know, I remember once, you know, in an elevator and, you know, you were really nice to me. And, you know, I think to myself, well, I'm so glad that they remember that. But I'm sure there's a lot of people that often remember, you know, you were a real. I mean, you know, or people have a different perception of that or whatever. You know, somebody once said this is a kind of a corny showbiz thing.

5:39But if you are famous and you run into somebody, you know, you won't remember this. You remember this this interaction for 10 seconds. And those people remember for the rest of their lives, which I find happens a lot. A lot of people come up to me and say, you know, we were once whatever in a steam room together or something, you know. sometimes by the way these are completely hypocritical stories there's some guy that had a story about me like getting mad at him because I was having a haircut and he looked at me the wrong way I mean some kind of crazy stuff I don't even understand the drive really was there from a very very young age I'm the youngest of six and I was really lucky I was actually literally just talking to my wife about this today.

6:31I was the youngest of six, and there was a big age gap between my closest sister and me, eight years. So I'm kind of a mistake. And a family of five, you don't wait eight years and then have another one. I mean, you'd have to be out of your mind. And so I had this amazing audience, and I had a group of people. With your siblings, you mean? My siblings, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and nature or nurture, I remember from my earliest days that when I walked into a room, I wanted people to look at me and I wanted to entertain them. I wanted to either make them laugh or make them listen to me or put on some kind of a show for everybody that I would interact with, starting with my siblings.

7:21But not only that, they were incredibly supportive of whatever I would do. They were like, that's so funny. That's so great. Yay, Kev, yay, Kev, yay, Kev. You know what I mean? Like, you know, like I had it right away. I had an audience that really enjoyed what I was doing and parents that were supportive of what I would do. So a lot of people, a lot of artists that reach a certain level of success, you often hear about how they rose out of their artistic creation and expression came out of pain and tragedy. And, you know, I'm not saying that I didn't have painful things. I do and have had, you know, tragedies and loss and all that stuff.

8:11But I also think that it's possible, too, that in my situation, a lot of what I got to was because I had a ton of support for the thing that I was doing and wanted to do. and I think that's something that I really feel a tremendous amount of gratitude for. But hand in hand with that was for sure a drive, a strong drive to become successful. Actors don't like to admit this. I wanted to be rich, famous, get girls, have a big house. I wanted my face on magazines, on billboards. I wanted all that stuff. It wasn't until I started studying and understood that there was a craft to this thing that I figured out that it was something that I had to work hard at being good at.

9:10But the thing that drove me to it was just treasure. The external, the fame, the success, the acknowledgement, the money, the opportunities that come from it. All of it. Were you more driven to be an artist then early on and to master your craft and inspire or entertain people like your siblings or the local school or whatever it might be that you're performing at? Or were you more drawn to the billboards and the magazines and the fame and you said, oh, this could be the path to getting there? I think I was more drawn to the magazines, the billboards and the fame. I didn't think so much about the past, but the artistry was when I made the decision to become an actor and I walked into an acting class or I picked up a guitar and I went, both of those things are hard, right?

10:08It's not, it's, it's not, it, you know, yeah, I guess there's people who are quote unquote naturals, but all of this stuff takes work. You gotta work at it. And I knew that right away. And I was blessed with a very strong work ethic. I was never looking to cut corners. I was never, I wanted all this big stuff, but I was never looking for the easy road in. I always have thought, you got to put it, this is another thing I got from my parents. I should, you know, they would love this podcast. If they were alive, they would love hearing this.

10:53They, both of them were like, go through the steps, go through the steps, whatever it is. You know what I mean? If you get a toy that you have to build, a model airplane, don't just try to put it together because you want to look at the picture and make it look like that. Go through the steps and learn how to do it the right way. And I realized when I walked into an acting class that, well, two things. One was that this was something that I was meant to do and something that I felt even before I knew even what the word therapy was. I found it very therapeutic. One of the things I was hearing you say just a moment ago is about how if your parents are around, they would love this episode, this podcast, this interview.

11:43And I'm hearing kind of the lessons that you've picked up from them and from your family. I'm curious, what's the biggest lesson from both mom and dad that still stick with you today and that made a massive impact on you growing up? yeah i mean i think we kind of touched on it before but i would say that my mother really taught me lessons about um being a at least attempting to be a good person and compassionate and to um you know live your life and think about people that um you know are not as fortunate as you are or try to understand someone's point of view uh not judge people by the way that they look or the color of their skin or what they're you know the way they talk or or where they're from or whatever these you know things are she was she was very much like that my mother was an interesting character because she was raised uh as a park avenue socialite wow um her family uh was wealthy um by the time i was born all of it was gone uh she really yeah um and and and i think that she also somehow felt a sense of, I think, shame about the, nobody really used the word privilege, but the privilege that she had come from.

13:22So by the time she met my father, she was working with poor people in Flint, Michigan, and really devoted her life both to early childhood education, but also to the poor and people in the prison system. For instance, you went into the Philadelphia prison system and built a playroom that could be utilized by the children and the prisoners on a visiting day when the kids would come. there would be stuff for the prisoners to interact with their children, which is kind of like a crazy idea, but they had all kinds of games and things that they could be doing together. She started nursery schools and housing projects and all that kind of stuff.

14:16And she really completely pushed back any kind of consumer. uh uh she she she did she had she went the opposite direction of anybody that was in pursuit of wealth or nice clothing or uh private schools or or good food or restaurants she just it it horrified her all of that she went the opposite of that she went the opposite of that but that's what you wanted to go towards right exactly no exactly that's exactly true that's exactly true so when you were when you were asking saying hey i want to be rich and famous and you know on magazines and billboards and awards was she saying hey that's not the way or was she i would never tell her that i would never have told her that right never i that's something that i never would have even begun to mention to her but i can tell you that um she also had very very strong uh activist kind of political ideas and she was very anti-war and very um into the civil rights movement used to take me to marches on washington as a little boy and marches against the vietnam war and in about probably 1974 or so uh we were just starting to kind of i guess get out of cambodia i don't remember how long we were stayed in cambodia but the vietnam war was essentially over but i think we were still bombing cambodia and um i got an offer as a as about a 14 or 15 year old kid to do a uh commercial for uh the rotc or to do a recruitment uh a military recruitment commercial about a kid doesn't know what he wants to do with his life it was just going to be used in philadelphia where i grew up and it was maybe like i don't know a couple hundred bucks or something like that for the day this is more money than i ever dreamed of as a 14 year old yeah yeah i was like this is amazing i'm doing it i told my mother she didn't speak to me for a week she thought that i had uh uh crossed a moral uh boundary from which i would never return because i was supporting the industrial military complex and i was profiting profiting from it and as a 14 year old kid you know it was she was very angry with me she really was and it was it's it's interesting but it's also interesting in that i believe uh there's a whole other discussion but i believe that children and certainly boys have to have a moment where they break away from their mother you know i mean i think it's kind of essential that it happens in some way at some point um and uh and that was the moment for me um wow my father on the other hand was not uh a wealthy person like my mother but he was very very drawn not to fortune because they almost both kind of looked down on the pursuit of money as being not really worthy.

17:51But he was very into being famous. Or let's put it this way. He got a lot. He was kind of a big deal in Philadelphia because he was the chairman of the Philadelphia Planning Commission and a pretty well-known city planner. So as a result, he was often in the papers when they decided to whatever, revitalize a neighborhood or move an express wire, whatever happened to be in terms of city planning. And I could tell right from the beginning that he was totally into his own press you know what i mean and his own like um uh notoriety and people would stop him on the streets and and say ed ed you know either i hate what you're doing or i like what you're doing or you know whatever it was but he was kind of like a you know a little of a celebrity in in a in in that pond of you know philadelphia and so from him i think i got that drive to uh be well known and i definitely think i wanted to be more well known than him well you made that happen that's for sure i did when was the i wanted to make sure i i go back to what we talked about just before this when was the moment for you when things started to transition from wanting to be well known and modeling kind of what you saw from your father uh to fame and riches and success into let me actually just focus on also mastering the craft the artistry that you have done so beautifully over the last three plus decades what how old were you what was that moment like yeah i mean i was living in philadelphia and i was in high school and i wanted to um study acting so i started to find theaters where uh i could take acting classes oftentimes in in situations where people were a lot older than me they weren't even really like kid classes they were like you know i was apprenticing at this theater and they were also you know teaching acting to uh people in their 20s and 30s you know and um so i would take acting i would take uh scene study and all of a sudden i went okay this is really about getting um better at the things that i'm doing and and also the content that i started to uh absorb entertainment wise moved from the monkeys and you know uh i dream of genie you know to um brando and montgomery clift and then a little bit later on the films of scorsese and dustin hoffman i remember seeing a double feature when i was when i was young it was like a theater and a dollar theater in my neighborhood where they would do second runs and it was a double feature or maybe they were spaced out over a week but it was midnight cowboy and um and the graduate both of which starred dustin hoffman and i looked at these two performances and when i saw midnight cowboy first and i thought to myself i looked at him and john void and i thought whoa where'd they get the homeless guy to be in the movie and where'd they get the cowboy to be in the movie i i literally i didn't understand that that and then when i saw the graduate i thought oh my god that's the same guy playing like a preppy kid and i thought wow okay this is what the art is about and that's the thing that i want so by the time i moved to new york when i was 17 By the time I moved to New York, it was Mean Streets.

22:00It was Sidney Lumet. It was, you know, De Niro and Al Pacino and Meryl Streep and John Casals and Voight and Nicholson. Nicholson, you know what I mean? All the 70s edgy movies and edgy, what were kind of thought of in some ways as like the New York actors. These are the people that I aspire to. And right away I was in acting school in New York. and I realized that, you know, this was something that was, that you could get really good at if you worked really hard. Interesting. And theater too. Theater, because, you know, I didn't, when I was younger, I didn't really think that much about theater.

22:52I mean, I was like, well, it's just a way to get it on TV or something like that, you know, but, but all of a sudden I was like okay i want movies and i want theater i don't even want tv i want nothing to do with tv this is like the 70s it was a different tv was different right i just want movies and i want theater what was it as competitive then as it is now that it seems like more and more people are getting into entertainment acting tv movies there's so many different mediums and platforms to to share your art now or was it less competitive back then i don't know uh i don't know more or less it seemed competitive to me i mean i i i i feel like i would go to open calls you know I was able to get into the stage actors union, Equity, when I was pretty young.

23:52And you could go down to the Equity office and they would have, you know, a bulletin board that would have open calls. Or you could get, there were two newspapers. One was called Backstage and one was called, I can't remember what the other one was. And you'd look in the back and there would be these open calls. and, you know, go to, they say, we want a guy, you know, in his teens and there'd be, you know, whatever lines around the block. Um, so yeah, it definitely, it felt competitive and I don't know, more or less, I'm not sure. When was the moment where you felt like, oh, this thing that I've wanted for a long time, this fame, this recognition, this, you know, everyone aware of who I am, the success, the money, when did that actually hit you where you said, oh, it's happening?

24:43it hasn't hit me yet really no you know i don't ever think i'm there you know come on really no i really i'm i'm and i'm not just you know uh being silly i just there's always something else to kind of aspire to there's places that i want to go i mean i'm gonna have to start to uh at some point accept um that i'm you know the like i'm good with what i've done i mean it's i kind of go back and forth on it you know but but i think that when you when you're an actor and you've been out of work and you are living paycheck to paycheck as we we do and you know you're um self-employed you've seen the bank accounts go from you know zero and back down to zero and up and down i think you always kind of feel like it's it's about to end and that there's that and then there's also you know trying to get better and trying to get another part that's even more challenging wow and um uh you know there's you know i mean i guess you know that being said i think that i'm at a point now where i've i've hung in there long enough that people are going to cut me a little bit of a break and they'll probably just keep me around just because I've hung in there so long well they're not going to keep you around because you've hung in they're going to keep you around because you're talented and you're good to people and you're hard working and you show up you're a professional I know I do think that there is there is something about longevity though I mean people say what's the secret to longevity and I say that is the secret if you because at some point it gets to that thing where you do something that somebody likes and then they kind of go you know i always liked him or even though up until that point they never did you know what i mean it's kind of but uh yeah so you never felt there was a moment when you were on billboards and a cover of magazines as no i mean i think there's moments of um excitement i think that uh probably when i was younger i didn't have the ability to enjoy them or to even flag them or to even sort of embrace them because a couple of things about that one is that i really don't have a rear view mirror i'm like always with my pedal to the metal looking down the road at what the next thing is going to be if you could go back to you know 23 24 and if you could give yourself a piece of advice about what's about to happen and how to manage the success, the fame, the self-sabotage that you started to do afterwards and everything in between, what would you say to your younger self?

27:55I think I would have said, um, embrace it as much as you possibly can, because the thing that you learn after being in my business for a long time is that if you're associated with things that make money, then you get more opportunities. It's kind of an obvious notion, but I was less interested in being associated with something that made money as I was interested to be associated with something that people considered as artistic excellence. And I think that if you at least for a while embrace the idea of something that makes money, that then within that framework, you will get more and more opportunities to show this artistic excellence.

28:50For a lot of years, I think I kind of self-sabotaged and squandered them. I mean, the choices that I made were not great. And the movies started bombing like left and right and center, just one after another, after another, after another. And so I started to feel myself, you know, kind of slipping away both from the financial side of it, but also from the artistic side. Interesting. um i also think if i could have given myself a piece of advice and this is about a lot of stuff it would be to take advice because honestly i was a kid even before i started who just thought he knew that knew everything you know what i mean it's like i i didn't want advice i didn't want I didn't want advice from people that knew a lot more about this business or even about life than I did.

29:47I just was somebody that thought they knew everything. And I didn't, you know. So if there had been somebody at that point in my life saying, you know, schmuck, don't do this, do this. This is going to be a good one. You know what I mean? And if I had put myself in the hands of someone that was willing and able to do that. But I really was like, people got the impression very much. I'm talking about, first off, I didn't have a manager for a really long time. But I'm talking about agents and lawyers. I just was like, no, no, no, I got this. You know what I mean? Don't tell me. So I think that I probably could have used some help.

30:38some more coaching advice and wisdom. Why do you, why do you think you, I mean, you mentioned that you were just making kind of poor choices that was, you know, I think you said in your word was like a bomb or flop. It was going downhill in some of these movies. Did you know like in your mind, this is going to be a hit or did you feel like, Oh, I'm just want to go against what everyone's telling me to do because they don't know. So I'm going to go after my own thing. And I think this is cool or I think it's artistic. yeah i think all those things i think all those things i um and also you know there's a lot of decisions that go into making a movie and some people are probably first off choosy or choosier if you look at the amount of movies i've made you know you probably could never accuse me of being choosy um and i think that uh um some people have the ability to kind of uh create a certain mystery around themselves and their career and their choices which i was never really able to do and i also think that you know my I would see things that I thought were interesting, but I really didn't.

32:02And to this day, probably don't have a real eye on the commercial. And some people have a real sense of that and also a real sense of our industry. You know, for I'm much more industry savvy or and I've taught myself like everything else it takes takes work. but i've taught myself and started to read and and think about you know the entertainment industry as something that is my bread and butter and something that i do but but when i was younger for for many years i mean probably way into my 40s you know i was like i'm not a i'm not a businessman that's not what i do you know i'm not i'm not a brand right this is the word we use now all the time um i i'm not a uh i don't i'm not a guy's in a in a back room smoking a cigar making a deal i'm i'm an artist you know i i don't i don't i can't think about i don't want to think about these things i want to just do my work i don't want to be associated with a product or uh you know try to you know sell something i would back in back in the days when i have to remember back in the days when i started if you were a movie actor you would never do a commercial never never never never you would do a commercial only in japan or where no one saw it here in the industry and it had to be and you could and back in those days if it really was there you really wouldn't see it you wouldn't see it because there was no you know youtube there was no internet there was no there was we really wouldn't see it you know there was and you would put that in your in your contract and you know now whatever that's completely turned on its on its end wow so i was um i didn't think that way and you know again i mean i i think that if there had been somebody you know in my life that i you know really uh you know trusted then you know, I, it probably would have helped.

34:09Right. Wow. Um, I'm curious about the, the whole fame and success stuff, because I'm going to butcher this quote, but I remember hearing Jim Carrey talk about something like he wishes everyone becomes rich and famous and realizes it's not the key to happiness. I'm paraphrasing this. I'm not sure if you've heard this quote from him. um what do you what do you what do people need to know if they're chasing a goal or dream that is about money fame success what do they really need to know about how to navigate still feeling happy fulfilled loved and not just oh i'm successful and famous but i'm also fulfilled what i would say about well first off i think that fame and celebrity and wealth are kind of two different things because there's a lot of people that have a lot of money that would never somebody would never ask for a picture in a restaurant right um so does that money make them happy no i mean obviously not you know people are unhappy all the time you know what your marriages don't work whatever the addiction or or personal misery um yeah i i don't think it hurts necessarily i mean i know people who have said to me they've they've They've been at some point in their life where they've had some kind of windfall and they say, yeah, I'm genuinely happier because I got some money in the bank.

35:51And listen, I think it's important. The pursuit of wanting to provide or to feel comfortable is not something to be ashamed of. that you know that's that was really part of part that was the that was the biggest thing that i think i broke away from when it came to my parents right your mom had shame around that both well both of them i think in their own ways did they really did uh but i don't think that money is the key to happiness i think that it is a um But you have to find something outside of your money to enjoy time, whatever that is. time with your family obviously is the one that i like or or with animals or or with or with nature or with friends with good friends you know with with with with friends that are friends uh whether the money is there or not you know what i mean now when it comes to fame nobody can really understand it until you've actually had it and i think there's two kinds of actors actors want to be famous and liars you become an actor because you want to be famous you you want people to look at you you want to perform to people otherwise you would do something where you would just stay in your room we got no attention yeah we didn't get attention you got no attention right now that being said there's a lot of people that work hard get there and then go whoa i don't like this at all you know what i mean what i will say about it is the thing about fame is that is it weird yeah it's weird i mean it's every time you're gonna step outside is if you're not in your room you will be looked at related to you know judged um uh as something of a novelty of a of a you know it's almost like a being like a like of a freakish nature you know where uh but the thing i will say about it is that it's 99 good like all day long you talk about being loved and i know that it's not true love but all day all day long people say kev oh i love you it happened you know 20 minutes ago we were on the road and someone's you know i've stopped at a rest stop and and you know the one this woman goes oh i'm sorry but i i just i just love you now when you think about that if that happens to you a lot in the course of your day it's it's a good feeling people are nice people are nice to you for reasons that you don't deserve you know i mean it's just it so to complain i would never complain too much about being famous number one because i have no one to blame but myself i've busted my whole life so that i could be famous and number two because it's mostly good right yeah people give you free all the time They give you hugs.

39:38They give you a high five. They say, I love you. Exactly. It's probably 95%, 99 % amazing. And then 1 % inconvenient at certain times is what it sounds like for you, at least. What's the dark side of fame that you've either experienced personally, maybe from the last three plus decades, or from what you've experienced of friends, acquaintances, people that you've worked with? Yeah. Yeah, I think that there is, there certainly are very, very serious risks to it. And I think all you have to do is, you know, look at someone who started at the same time that I did. And there's a lot of, when I say, you know, the terrible word, but there's a lot of roadkill.

40:27There's a lot of people that have just gone off the rails or disappeared or gone into drug addiction or gone into, you know, some kind of scandals or depression or whatever, or not even alive. You know, I mean, there's a lot of it's it there's a lot of people that have a have a real kind of difficult time with it for for those reasons, I think, because partly it's it's it's it's not it's it doesn't it's just a weird life. And you start to wonder if any of these things that people are saying to you, like I love you or whatever, are real. And if you don't have the real stuff going as well, you can just kind of get caught up on it.

41:18I mean, I think that, you know, you even the world of movies, we live in this while we're making a film, we live in this kind of fantasy world where we're trying to exactly create another world. The sets are made to feel as real as possible. The props are made to feel as real as possible. you're holding something that feels like a gun in your hand. You know, you're, you're, you're kissing, you know, a beautiful woman that, that, you know, probably in life never would even look twice at you. You know, you're, you're, you're, you're riding a horse, you know, across the, the desert, and it's an actual desert and an actual horse.

42:07And I think that you can get really kind of confused about what life is when you go from one fantasy situation to another to another to another you start to believe that you know the person that plays your best friend actually is your best friend with no idea that that the movie is going to end someday and then when that movie ends and when that friendship ends you start to feel like oh like who am i like that's kind of weird right that that i that i went that far and by that shallow a person but then you're on to the next movie and then you know you got another world and then you got you know somebody else is is are playing your parents and you you know you feel like you know they feel like your parents and then you go wait a second my parents and you know so so i think that you it's very easy That and also, I think that once the fame kicks in, a lot of people start to, you know, you mentioned those inconveniences.

43:16They start to isolate themselves from everyday people. You know, the gates on your house get bigger. You're no longer taking the subway. You're jumping in and out of limousines. You start to hang out with other famous people because you have a shared experience. Therefore, you feel more comfortable being with them. You can look around the room and hypothesize that nobody is there because they want something from you. And I think that as a result, you can just fall into traps and just kind of lose touch. I also think that can be very detrimental to your acting because, you know, what we are tasked to do is, at least what I am tasked to do, is so often is to play an everyman.

44:17I don't play movie stars. I mean, once in a while I do. I don't, you know, once in a while I play somebody famous. Once in a while I play somebody rich. But mostly I play regular guys. So if I don't have any chance in my life to interact with regular people, I think you can lose touch with what that is. That's probably why I saw you at that deli one day 12 years ago, just out with the people. This is fascinating. Everything you just shared for me is really fascinating to hear your perspective. I'm so glad you're opening up about this. And one of the things I heard in this was kind of around identity is you're always shifting or morphing identities, you know, and the more successful actor you are, you've gotten three movies a year or whatever it is.

45:09So over the last three plus decades and all the roles you've played, you've had to step into a fantasy world, like you mentioned, and play a character and have a different identity than your own core identity. How do you and how have you kept your core values and your core identity, even while playing other parts over the last three plus decades and not let it diminish your light, diminish your confidence, diminish your values, diminish your connections, your family relationships, all these different things? you got to learn how to leave your work at the office for one thing i mean i i completely uh agree with you that is that is part of the challenge i mean the one thing i will start with is that the reason that i became an actor a big part of it once i got into the kind of skill and craft piece of it was so that i could walk in another man's shoes Like I didn't want to put Kevin up there.

46:19I still don't. I don't think it's, I mean, it's kind of fun, like in the social media piece of it, even though it's still at its essence, it's still kind of a performance. Like who I am once, you know, we end this conversation is not exactly who I am even in this conversation. Interesting. it's just there is an element of of being a performer that that you have to and and so when it comes to characters i always wanted to play somebody that was different than me someone that was from a different uh cultural kind of background or socio-economic um upbringing or had a different you know political point of view or was in a different sort of gig than i had You know, I mean, I've played a bunch of Marines and I couldn't make it through 10 minutes of boot camp.

47:17But the idea to be able to embody that and understand what that is and make it believable when I put on that uniform has always been the challenge. Not to be me. And when it comes to my own image, I don't really think about that that much. Like, I don't, in a perfect world, I would only let the work ever speak for itself. There's a necessity to promote the things that you're in. um you know in this case the podcast you know there's a necessity to uh stay especially in this day and age you know to stay relevant and have have people kind of be aware of who you are but in a perfect world i would only just play character after character after character and And when it comes to figuring out and holding on to who you are, I wish I had real specific tools.

48:34But I would say that I got extremely lucky by meeting a woman who is able, whether she tries to or not, to keep me aware of that. To not believe too much of my legend, but also not beat myself up too much when things I don't feel are going my way. Wow. And to be able to connect on ways that have nothing to do with the part that I'm playing or that she's playing or with the industry or with whatever, to connect on things like children and our, you know, or animals or conversations over, you know, politics or nothing. Taking a walk and holding hands, cooking a meal together. you know we we cook together all the time at least i mean it was you know during the lockdown jesus it's like we're cooking like you know three meals a day after a while i was like oh my god if we have to cook another meal and clean up another meal i think i'm gonna jump out of a window you know but we really love to do that and share and we don't even you know we it doesn't even need to be cooked for somebody else it's just just for us you know but to and i don't uh i'm just i just feel so grateful you know i really think that you have to have other stuff outside of you know your work um that whatever it is a good book yoga meditation um horseback riding exercise um you know just whatever wordle i mean watching reality tv just you know whatever it happens to be something that that takes you away from what the what the daily thing was and that's the same thing as being an actor i mean i also have to say that um it does get to you you're the parts that I play.