‘Footloose’ Star Kevin Bacon Didn’t Know He Was Signing Up For A Dancing Movie: “Just Play The Record For Me And I’ll Jump Around”

Kevin Bacon was ready to truly cut loose when he starred in the original Footloose movie. According to the actor, he didn’t even realize he was signing on for a “dance movie” when he booked the role of Ren McCormack in the 1984 musical drama.

While speaking on a recent episode of Penn Badgley‘s Podcrushed podcast, Bacon reflected on the film that turned him into a teen heartthrob in the ’80s. While he “always liked to dance,” he said he was “not a dancer” when he signed on for the dance-heavy flick.

“I wasn’t trained as a dancer,” he said. “If I’m being honest, I didn’t even really understand that it was a dance movie. I thought it was just a movie, and then, where they would indicate that there was dancing, I would just get up.”

He added, “They said something about a choreographer and I said, ‘You don’t really need a choreographer. I’ll just get up and dance. It’s not a big deal. Just play the record for me and I’ll jump around.’ So I was definitely not trained by any stretch of the imagination.”

Footloose follows teenage Ren (Bacon) as he moves to the small town of Bomont, where dancing and rock music are prohibited by the town council and a local minister. As a result, Ren — who also happens to fall for Rev. Shaw Moore’s (John Lithgow) daughter — leads a rebellion in an effort to overturn the outrageous ban on dancing.

Following its release, Footloose‘s iconic musical numbers turned Bacon into somewhat of a pop star. However, he was longing for more serious roles and the opportunity to work with legendary directors like Martin Scorsese.

“When I became a pop star, the last thing I wanted to be was a pop star,” he said. “I had already moved into, ‘I want to be Dustin Hoffman or Meryl or John Cazale or De Niro. I want to work with Scorsese. I want to do Chekhov.’ You know what I mean?”

He continued, “I was so into what my idea of a serious actor was, and all of a sudden I was given this thing that was completely not a serious actor. So I rejected it, full on. I tried to self-sabotage that piece of myself and my popularity.”

The Friday the 13th star recalled feeling “very uncomfortable” with photo shoots and magazines, adding that everything he dreamed of as a kid gave him a “tremendous amount of self-doubt and anxiety.”

Fortunately for Bacon — who is still waiting on that Oscar nomination — he went on to work with some of the most famed directors in cinema such as Oliver Stone in JFK, Rob Reiner in A Few Good Men and Clint Eastwood in Mystic River, to name a few.