Kevin Bacon has revealed he’s banned Footloose from being played in his presence after being asked to dance ‘like a monkey’ too many times.
The American actor, 66, starred in the 1984 film Footloose that saw him play Ren McCormack – a Chicago teenager who tries to overturn a ban on dancing in a small Utah town.
Footloose was a major success, becoming the seventh highest grossing film of 1984 – the lead song from its soundtrack, sung by Kenny Loggins, was a hit internationally.
Its music video featured Kevin dancing to the song, with clips from the film played over the hit single, and was re-used for the 2011 Footloose remake starring Kenny Wormald.
The song reached number one on the American charts and number six in the UK in the mid-80s, eventually selling almost three million copies across both countries.
But, after all this time, the song isn’t music to Kevin’s ears, with the actor apparently banning the song from being played when he’s around.
During an interview at the SXSW festival in the States, he told the crowd (via Variety) that the idea of Footloose being played around him is a ‘nightmare’.
‘[Fame] is what I wanted, I have no one to blame but myself. It was definitely my dream to have all those things,’ he told the audience.
‘But until you really have that, you don’t really realize there’s something kind of strange about it – it was just so the opposite of how I wanted to view myself.’
He continued: ‘My worst nightmare is to be at a wedding and the DJ puts on Footloose. They always start out being about the bride, and then there’s alcohol involved.
‘And by about 10:30, the song comes on, and suddenly the wedding becomes about me getting out and dancing. People will literally form a circle around me and clap their hands like I’m a trained monkey.’
These days, Kevin tries to get ahead of the game by approaching the DJs early on and asking if they can avoid playing Footloose for the rest of the night.
But he clarified that it’s nothing to do with how he feels about Footloose itself: ‘It’s not because I don’t love the song, I do love this song. It’s not because I’m not proud of the movie, I’m 100% proud of it.’
While it wasn’t Kevin’s first role in a major film, Footloose is the film that turned him into a star, eventually leading to him receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003.
In 2024, Kevin told Metro that he ‘doesn’t know what the Footloose dance is’ and remarked that he has become slightly irritated by people asking him to perform it.
He said: ‘When people say, “Do the Footloose dance,” I don’t know what the Footloose dance is. I was on a red carpet recently – a couple of people [asked me] “Will you do the Footloose dance?” And I’m like, “No!” I’ll do that when I choose to do it.’
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