Benedict Cumberbatch: one movie away from Kevin Bacon.
Meryl Streep: one movie away from Kevin Bacon.
Timothée Chalamet: two movies away from Kevin Bacon.
Saoirse Ronan: two movies away from Kevin Bacon.
Anya Taylor-Joy: two movies away from Kevin Bacon.
Jessie Buckley: two movies away from Kevin Bacon.
Austin Butler: two movies away from Kevin Bacon.
Margot Robbie: two movies away from Kevin Bacon.
Emma Stone: one movie away from Kevin Bacon.
Zendaya: two movies away from Kevin Bacon.
The “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is a game where players try to
connect any actor to Kevin Bacon in fewer than six steps, where each
step links two actors who co-starred in a film.
The conventional wisdom is that Kevin Bacon is the all-encompassing
center of Hollywood, so prolific that the game is a lot easier than if
it were called the “Six Degrees of John Doe.”
For example, Kevin Bacon’s remoteness is 2.28: so an actor
is, on average, 2.28 degrees from Kevin Bacon. But 2.28 degrees is
not the best remoteness score. Kevin Bacon ranks 175th among all
Hollywood actors. Can you guess who’s #1?
Philip Seymour Hoffman ranks #250. Keep going…
Samuel L. Jackson is the center of Hollywood, with a
remoteness of just 2.09. Willem Dafoe is second at 2.13, and Robert
De Niro follows at 2.14.
Women are underrepresented among the top 100, taking only 16 spots.
Nicole Kidman is the highest-ranking woman at #21.
Let’s create a time machine for the center of Hollywood and
calculate actors’ remoteness in previous years. Our time
machine starts at the end of 2025.
Let’s time travel to 2006, when Samuel L. Jackson took the
crown.
Kevin Bacon still does not appear; his highest rank was #108 in 1996
after his role in “Sleepers.”
We can view all centers of Hollywood since 1980. Use the slider to
look around.
How might we predict who will take the crown from Samuel L. Jackson?
Let’s apply this idea to the future.
To do that, we need to find what affects an actor’s remoteness
score.
One obvious metric is film count. Indeed, Samuel L. Jackson appeared
in far more films than anyone else in our 169,000 actor dataset.
Nicolas Cage, who’s the next closest, appeared in 96 films.
While the relationship between film count and remoteness is strong,
it doesn't fully explain actors’ scores. For example, Natalie
Portman and Anna Kendrick differ significantly in their remoteness,
despite appearing in the same number of films.
The difference between Natalie Portman and Anna Kendrick lies in
their co-stars: Natalie Portman is cast in films with more prolific
actors than Anna Kendrick. Of the 250 most-connected actors, Natalie
Portman has worked with almost three times as many as Anna Kendrick
has.
So if you work with more “big dog” actors compared to someone with
the same film count, you'll almost certainly be closer to the center
of Hollywood. Consequently, co-star film count is the next important
factor: this is an actor’s 50 most prolific co-stars by number
of films, taken as an average.
Test your knowledge with a few examples: for these actors with
similar film counts, who do you think works with more “big dogs” and
is more connected to all of Hollywood?
We now have everything we need to predict the future Samuel L.
Jackson using film count and co-star data. Our contenders are 99
actors born since 1997 (i.e., Gen Z) who have appeared in at least 5
films.
For the prediction, we need to model actors’ film count and
co-star trajectory. To do this, we look at what has happened to
actors with similar data in the past.
When predicting film count, consider Sydney Sweeney, who has
appeared in 16 films since her debut 15 years ago. By the same point
in his career, Robert De Niro also racked up 16 films, and he went
on to have a brilliant career totalling 87. By contrast, Chevy Chase
reached the same 16-film milestone, but ultimately only appeared in
27 total.
Conversely, after 47 years in Hollywood, Kevin Bacon has a similar
film count to Helen Mirren and Gene Hackman.
You'll remember Gene Hackman from the time machine; Kevin Bacon
could have been the center of Hollywood if he were born 20 years
earlier.
To model a Gen Z actor’s trajectory, we consider comparable
careers based on film count and career age, randomly selecting one
weighted by similarity.
By applying the same approach for co-star film count, we can start
predicting.
To achieve a stable result, we'll run the simulation 10,000 times
and see who comes out on top.
The most wins across the 10,000 simulations:
Chloë Grace Moretz 11.6%
Isabela Merced 5.3%
Ariana Greenblatt 9.4%
Maya Hawke 6.4%
Fred Hechinger 4.7%
Chloë Grace Moretz is the most likely Samuel L. Jackson for Gen Z,
winning over 10% of simulations. It’s by no means a landslide:
her median remoteness is 2.19 and median projected film count is 66,
quite far from Samuel L. Jackson’s stratospheric numbers of
116 career films and a 2.09 remoteness score.
As time goes on, Samuel L. Jackson will eventually stop appearing in
films and have fewer connections to new actors, lowering his
remoteness score.
Meanwhile, younger actors will continue starring in films and
overtake his status as the center of Hollywood. What we don’t
know, however, is exactly how long that will take.
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