Four degrees from Kevin Bacon
A few weeks ago, while watching TV, I came across a miniseries called “Tsunami the Aftermath”. In it were some known actors (e.g. Toni Collette) and some lesser known ones, such as my brother-in-law’s brother, Leon Ford. Needless to say I was slightly surprised: he’s been in a bunch of movies and TV shows in Australia; but this was the first time I’d come across him randomly.
Anyway, after watching the show I started to wonder how he (and more importantly, I) would rate in a “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game. We didn’t have the internet at the time, and the best we could come up with was:
- Leon Ford → Tsunami the Aftermath → Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Chiwetel Ejiofor → Love, Actually → Denise Richards
- Denise Richards → Wild Things → Kevin Bacon
(Incidentally, I just got some spam from “Denise Richards”. It wasn’t that exciting.)
There was also a link involving Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise. But that was obviously longer. So I left it at that, with Leon on three degrees of separation — that meant I was on five degrees (or four if you leave out my brother-in-law; I was willing to do this to fit into the six degrees…)
Tonight I discovered the Oracle of Bacon. Using IMDb data, it allows you to find the Bacon number for any actor. Apparently Leon has a bacon number of two; i.e. he’s two degrees away from Kevin Bacon. So I’m closer than I thought: I’m actually four degrees away. You can also use the site to connect any two actors, and it also has a page analysing the best centres of the Hollywood universe — it would appear that Kevin Bacon is in fact not the most connected actor.
Hooray for Graph Theory!