Back in grad school, I found someone with a Bacon number of 7 and got on the Hall of Fame page on the Oracle of Bacon. One of my prouder moments.
William Rufus Shafter.
Just saw it in a publication. Supposedly only 196 names on IMDb are 6 or greater.
Oddly, it works on my home computer but not on my work computer.
It works for non-actors too.
Kate Bush’s Bacon number is 3
Kate Bush and Miranda Richardson appeared in The Line, the Cross and the Curve*.
Miranda Richardson and Sarah Jessica Parker appeared in Spinning Into Butter.
Sarah Jessica Parker and Kevin Bacon appeared in Footloose.
- The Line, the Cross and the Curve is a musical film that Kate directed, consisting of a series of shorts set to songs based on a central theme of her album The Red Shoes (itself inspired by the 1948 film The Red Shoes). It counts because it showed in theaters. It premiered at a theater during the 37th London Film Festival, and my husband and I saw it twice in theaters (once in a suburb of London, and once at Chicago’s Facets theater.)
Another funny one:
Ravi Shankar’s Bacon number is 3
Ravi Shankar and Bob Dylan appeared in The Concert for Bangladesh.
Bob Dylan and Chris Penn appeared in Masked and Anonymous.
Chris Penn and Kevin Bacon appeared in Footloose.
Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall are both 2s. Since I was in a movie with both of them (The Portrait), my Bacon Number is 3. 
I was surprised that Harry Houdini had a Bacon Number. It’s 4, by the way.
So photographs don’t count? Damn, I gotta get myself in a movie.
My number is 3. Everyone famous I ever met is a 2.
I have a Bacon Number of 2, and hubby has a Bacon Number of 3, if we’re going by our connections celebrities we have met and interacted with, not just “Hey, it’s that guy eating at the table two over from us!”. Neither hubby nor I are actors, so there’s no other way to link us.
Sir Francis Bacon has a Bacon Number of infin…ERROR…ERROR…ERROR…OVERLOAD…<blue screen of death>
However, the painter Francis Bacon appeared in the short film* Heads with Marianne Faithfull
…who appeared in Marie Antoinette with Rose Byrne
…who appeared in X-Men: First Class with Kevin Bacon
for a Bacon number of 3
*Not sure if the official rules require features only
Since I’ve met Alice Cooper, and he has a Bacon number of 3, I’m claiming a 4 and no one can take that away from me. Even though I’m a nobody. Heh.
Can anyone please point me to an explanation of how to caculate you BN?
Anytime that I’ve gone looking for this, it just seems to evaporate on me.
Oh. Is it done like this?
You find the most famous person you’ve ever met. (I’ve met Joan Rivers and Pierre Elliot Trudeau).
Most of you will probably never have heard of Trudeau and that’s OK.
Anyway, you then add one to the BN of the most famous person you have ever met. Is that correct?
Is it the number of people you are “away” from Kevin Bacon? So, if I’ve met person A who has met person B who has met Kevin Bacon, then my BN would be 3? Is that right?
Me -> A -> B -> Kevin Bacon
My BN would be 3. Yes?
And that is all it takes? You just need to meet them? You don’t even need to speak with them? You just shake their hand and that is good enough?
What if they pass by you and pay no attention to you and you shout at them, “Hello Joan!”. Does that count as having met Joan Rivers? How do you define “having met” someone or “knowing” someone? Do they have to appear in a film with Kevin Bacon?
OMG!! I just Googled “Joan River Bacon Number” and it told me that her BN was 2. So my BN would be 3? OMG! I feel special now. Woo! Woo! Woo!
I yam a 3!!!
Does that mean that anyone I have exchanged email with is a 4?
You know, this BN is not really a good measure of anything because …
If you meet someone like Joan Rivers who has interviewed lots of celebs on the red carpet for Oscar Night or Emmy night (cringe), she is bound to have a very low BN. And so then you will prob have a very low BN too. But, so what? Why would that make you special? All you did was meet that dork! You never did anything celebritary worthy. So what makes you special? Nothing, really!
Oh my. Emmy night? That should count as negative numbers. Ugh!
I once participated in an acting workshop conducted by Chris Sarandon. He has a Bacon number of 2. Does that make mine 3?
I’d just like to tell you how I met Joan Rivers so that someone can tell me if that would count towards my BN.
She was playing a concert one night in Vancouver around 1985 and I guess she is a vegetarian because there was only one half-decent vegetarian restaurant in Vancouver at that time and I went in to get some “take out” and then she came in with Franken and Davis to get some takeout as well. I guess they were her writers at that time.
I said, “Hello” and we got to chatting and one thing led to another and she invited me to come to her concert that night and come backstage and meet the backstage people. But I could not do that because I was working that night.
Anyway that is the long and short of it. Oh! I should look up Al Franken’s BN and Tom Davis’ BN too. I just said hello to them and shook their hands. But would that count towards my BN?
Humph! Both Franken and Davis also have BN’s of 2. I’m guessing it will be pretty tough for me to get my BN below 3. Oh well.
No, that’s not how it works. You have to actually have acted in a movie with someone who has acted in a movie (etc., repeat or subtract as needed for whatever value of Bacon) with Kevin Bacon. Being the cousin of Kevin Bacon’s hairdresser’s secret gay lover, while nice, I’m sure, does not give you a Bacon number.
Oh wow! Chris Sarandon is a great actor. I remember him from Dog Day Afternoon. He played Al Pacino’s gay lover. He was great in that film.