Bacon Number and the size of Hollywood.

Hollywood is a very small place. I am not talking physically – although it isn’t very big in that sense, either – I am talking in terms of relationships.

Today, I went to the Oracle of Bacon, online, and typed in my name, out of curiosity, to see what connection it could find for me, with Kevin Bacon, the actor.

It said I have a Bacon Number of 2. That is I am only two degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.

The relationship was that I appeared in Vikingdom as Warick, (not yet released) with Ron Smoorenburg (as Captain of Jomsberg 2), who appeared with Kevin Bacon in Elephant White (2011). This brought home to me just how small Hollywood is, in terms of human associations.

Only by appearing in a film with Kevin Bacon directly, could I improve upon this Bacon Number. Whether that will happen is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, it does show how small the filmic world is.

To put this Bacon Number score of 2 into perspective, I looked up Dominic Purcell’s Bacon Number (he is the star of Vikingdom, playing the hero Eirick). It is also 2. The connection is that Dominic Purcell was in Scenes of the crime (2001) with Robert Wahlberg, who went on to appear in Mystic River (2003) with Kevin Bacon.

Now, that is not to say that I am as well established as Dominic Purcell – I am not, by a great margin – but in terms of connectivity to Kevin Bacon in this limited sense, we are just as well connected as each other.

On the other hand, Tom Cruise has a Bacon Number of 1, having appeared with him in A Few Good Men (1992).

Of course, this measure of Hollywood connectivity is entirely arbitrary, since any other actor could have been chosen. There are in fact many more well connected actors than Kevin Bacon (I read recently that he was only the 444^th most connected actor in Hollywood). It is probable that the connectivity numbers would be smaller had a more well connected actor been chosen as the “target” than Kevin Bacon. Whatever the case, whomever is chosen to connect to, the result would be the same: Hollywood is a very small “place”.

Given how small it is, I feel fortunate to be a part of it, in my own way.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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