Actor's Hollywood career spawned 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon'

The game was based on the idea that any actor who has appeared in a film can be linked to the star in six steps or less.

It was created by four students at Albright College in Pennsylvania, who came up with the concept while watching Footloose.

They wondered how many films Bacon had been in and how easy it would be to link him to other actors through those movies.

The students subsequently concluded that Bacon, who has been in films alongside a litany of A-list stars, was “the centre of the entertainment universe” and the idea became a board game.

The actor has told how he didn’t like the game to begin with because he thought it was mocking him, but later he embraced it.

Fans of the game give other actors a “Bacon Number” which is the number of steps it takes to link them to the actor.

Kevin Bacon himself has the Bacon Number zero. Jack Nicholson, who starred in “A Few Good Men” with him has a Bacon Number of one. Michelle Pfeiffer, who was in “Wolf” with Jack Nicholson therefore has a Bacon Number of two.