Kevin Bacon left baffled after discovering his wife is actually his cousin
There aren't many surprises you can face in a marriage but finding out you're somewhat related to your spouse is definitely up there.
And that's what happened when Kevin Bacon, 66, and his wife Kyra Sedgwick, 58, discovered they’re actually cousins.
The awkward moment was caught on TV when the Footloose actor decided to look into his family tree.
After working together on the 1988 movie Lemon Sky, the pair fell head over heels for one another.
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Bacon and Sedgwick then got hitched that year and later went on to welcome two children together.
However during a 2013 episode of Finding Your Roots, it was revealed to Sedgwick that husband Bacon was her distant cousin.
The American show allows people find out their ancestry in a similar way to the British series Who Do You Think You Are?
On Finding Your Roots, presenter Henry Louis Gates Jr showed Sedgwick a photo of her ninth cousin once removed and announced: “And his name is Kevin Bacon.”
In response, Sedgwick, who had already expressed concerns that the show would reveal them to be related, said: “See. I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”
However, she added: “As long as we’re not first cousins, it’s fine.”
Elsewhere in the show, Bacon is told: “You and Brad Pitt are 13th cousins twice removed.
“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," the actor responded.
Bacon has previously admitted that he didn’t like the concept of the game 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' as he initially felt it was a joke at his expense.
The game is based upon the assumption that just about everybody in the film industry can be linked through their movie roles to Bacon within six steps or fewer.
Speaking on the On With Mario Lopez podcast last year, he explained: “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!’”
Sharing how he first came to discover the game, Bacon 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.’”
The star went on to say that he assumed it would have died off by now, but the game is still widely played.
“It’s hard to imagine, but we didn’t have the same - if something went viral, we didn’t really use that word,” Bacon said.
“Viral was a virus, it wasn’t an idea! But it spread and spread and spread, and I honestly thought it was gonna go away, and it just didn’t go away!”
Topics: Celebrity, Sex and Relationships
Claire Reid