Kevin Bacon left stunned after discovering his wife is his cousin
Kevin Bacon was left completely baffled after discovering that his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, is actually his cousin.
Back in 2013, the 67-year-old Footloose star and Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress Sedgwick, 60, appeared on Finding Your Roots, the American take on the British ancestry hit programme, Who Do You Think You Are?.
Now, the celebrity couple fell head over heels after working together on the movie Lemon Sky, which hit cinemas in 1988.
They ended up getting engaged in 1987 and married a year later, and went on to have two children, Travis and Sosie.
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However, it's clear that the news that they are distantly related was not exactly on the wedding checklist, given the pair's reaction to the bombshell revelation.
During the episode, presenter Henry Louis Gates Jr. showed Sedgwick a photo of her ninth cousin once removed, and it turned out to be none other than, you guessed it, her husband.
"And his name is Kevin Bacon," the host revealed.
Sedgwick, who had already admitted she feared the show might link her and her hubby on the family tree, exclaimed: "See. I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!"
She quickly reassured viewers that no family reunion needed to be cancelled, adding: "As long as we’re not first cousins, it’s fine."
Elsewhere in the TV programme, Bacon was informed he had another unknown celebrity family connection.
"You and Brad Pitt are 13th cousins twice removed!" he was told. "You and President Obama share a common ancestor named Anthony Woolhouse. You are 12th cousins, three times removed."
"No kidding. I knew I wasn’t getting enough respect," Bacon responded.
Over the years, it's become a bit of a running joke that Bacon is very well-connected to several fellow A-listers.
The joke has actually culminated in something known as the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' game, which is where players challenge each other to arbitrarily choose someone in the film industry and link them through their movie roles to the Hollywood A-lister within six steps or fewer.
So, for example, let's take someone like Ben Affleck, who starred in Good Will Hunting alongside Matt Damon, who starred in Ocean's Eleven with Julia Roberts, who starred in Flatliners with - you guessed it - Bacon.
Previously opening up about his opinions on the game, Bacon explained on the On With Mario Lopez podcast back in 2023: "I was horrified! Because I thought it was really a joke at my expense. I just thought, 'Oh come on, they’re just making fun of me, let’s face it!'"
Explaining how he first came to discover the game, he continued: "I heard about it, people would come up to me and say, 'My cousin invented a game about you', or, 'I’m so hungover, I was playing your game last night'.
"I had no idea what they were talking about, I was like, 'I think you’ve got the wrong guy.'"
Topics: Celebrity, Sex and Relationships, Social Media
Rhiannon Ingle