Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick are one of those rare Hollywood couples: Not only have they been married for over 30 years and acted together frequently, they have even survived directing one another in films.
But that doesn't mean they're always OK with each other's performances, as Bacon revealed on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Monday. As he explained, Sedgwick was directing him in a small part in the new movie "Space Oddity" when they hit a stumbling block.
"We got to this one line, and this one line ... I just, in her ear, was not saying it right," said Bacon, 63.
What was the line?
"'OK,'" he told Kimmel. "That's the whole line."
Now, Bacon wasn't having a problem saying the two syllables of the word. The problem for Sedgwick, 56, was in the inflection.
"I do, I don't know, five takes, very unusual to do that many takes," continued Bacon. Well, it seems like he nailed it eventually ... until some months later while the film is being edited, Sedgwick calls him up and asks for a voice memo of "various versions of 'OK,'" he recalled.
"So I'm sitting there on my iPhone going, 'OK,' 'OK,' 'OK.' I'm pulling out all the stops," said the actor. "I guess she drops one of them in and sure enough we get to this thing called looping."
Looping, in Hollywood jargon, is when lines in a film have to be replaced for various reasons, like noise interference. An actor stands on a stage, watches himself on the screen, and does a re-read of the line. Well, guess what line Sedgwick wanted her husband to do again?
Clearly, she was not OK with his OKs.
Still, this is hardly the first time the pair have shared a workspace. In addition to appearing on screen together in films like "Lemon Sky," "The Woodsman" and "Murder in the First," Bacon has also directed Sedgwick in movies like "Loverboy," while Sedgwick has helmed films starring Bacon like "Story of a Girl." They're used to it by now, at least in theory.
And yet, that's still not the end of the "OK" story, Bacon revealed. "We watched the movie last night ("Space Oddity" had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival), and we got to that scene and I'm glancing over at her and thinking, 'I don't think I got it.' I don't think in her mind I ever (got it). I don't think it was ... OK."