6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon

I’ve always loved this game. Its premise is that you can like any actor (or director) to Kevin Bacon with six actors (or directors) or less. Even the most unlikely of people. For example I’ll link him to the actress Taraji P. Henson.

This is how the game goes: Taraji P. Henson co-starred with Brad Pitt in the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Brad Pitt co-starred with George Clooney in the Ocean’s Eleven franchise; George Clooney starred alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones I the flick Intolerable Cruelty; Zeta-Jones starred alongside Queen Latifah in the hit movie Chicago; and Queen Latifah co-starred with Kevin Bacon in the movie Beauty Shop. Those are your links. I’m pretty sure those two could be linked a lot less obscurely than the path I chose, but hey, it’s an example.

Also, the coolest thing about this game is it helps you bone up on your movie knowledge. It’s a useless talent, but I try to think of it as reading--anything to get those brain muscles working. Besides Charades, I wonder how many people play this game at dinner parties.

Another cool fact about this game is that because of it (I’m sure this entire thing started out as a joke of some kind and then took on serious proportions) Kevin Bacon started a charity in his game’s namesake. So how cool is he? Very.