Kevin Bacon is looking on the bright side.
The “Footloose” star said in a new interview that despite losing a fortune in Bernie Madoff’s infamous Ponzi scheme more than a decade ago, he now focuses on the blessings he still has in his life.
“It sucked, and we were certainly angry and all the things,” he told Esquire on Friday of how he and wife Kyra Sedgwick first coped with the scandal.
“But then we woke up the next day and said, ‘What do we got? We love each other. We love our children. We’re healthy. No one took away our ability to make a living.’ So we got back to work.”
Bacon, 66, has never revealed how much money he actually lost due to Madoff defrauding the couple, but it was reported to have been in the “millions.”
The “A Few Good Men” actor — who currently has an estimated net worth of $45 million — told Esquire that, ironically, he has a frequent reminder of what he went through because he goes to a gym in New York City that is across from where Madoff used to work.
He said the fitness facility’s leg press machine is “right next to a window” and when he looks out, he’s “looking right at the building where Madoff was.”
“I’m in excruciating pain, doing the leg press, staring out that window. It’s perfect, in a funny way, because I also have to think, ‘I can get through this,’” Bacon said. “And that’s how we felt about Madoff.”
The “Mystic River” star noted that he and Sedgwick, 59, have not become “jaded” because of the experience, but rather learned to be more “careful.”
“If it seems too good to be true, then it’s too good to be true,” he added.
In 2015, Bacon opened up about how the financial blow actually helped light a fire in his marriage.
“I don’t think there was a moment where it was like, that thing happened and then we got pissed at each other. It was sort of the opposite,” he explained to GQ at the time.
“We kind of went, ‘Holy s–t. Let’s … I don’t know. Let’s have sex or something. It’s free!’”
Bacon, who has been married to Sedgwick since 1988, also recognized then that there were “so many people who got hit so much harder” than the famous duo.
Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 for defrauding thousands of investors out of nearly $65 billion with his Ponzi scheme. His victims reportedly got a $4.3 billion payout.
The criminal financier died of natural causes at age 82 at a North Carolina federal medical center while serving his sentence. He had been suffering from end-stage kidney disease and other chronic ailments.
Read the full article here
