Kevin Bacon 'discouraged kids from acting'

Kevin Bacon has admitted that he actively discouraged his children with Kyra Sedgwick from becoming actors.

The X-Men: First Class star worked with his wife to make the entertainment industry seem as unappealing as possible to 21-year-old Travis and 19-year-old Sosie, as neither wanted to see their offspring suffer a life of "scrutiny and rejection".

"We were really so negative about [acting] when they were younger that neither one of them are interested and they're pretty much on their way to doing what it is that they want to do at this point," he told CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight.

"It's kind of weird that we were [discouraging], in retrospect. I mean, I think for both of us we were afraid of subjecting our children to a lifetime of scrutiny and rejection.

"We were talking before about how to be an actor, you've got to really have a really tough skin. When you're an actor, it's you [that is judged]. It's your face. It's everything... It's so personal that I don't think we really wanted to put our kids through that."

Bacon told Digital Spy last month that he felt "really lucky" to have a career in music and movies.

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Watch Kevin Bacon talk to Digital Spy about his career below: