Sosie Bacon takes her first lead role in new horror film, Smile

She is the daughter of two famous actors but Sosie Bacon never planned to follow in their footsteps. So how did they feel when she did?

Sosie Bacon might have grown up with famous acting parents – but that didn’t mean she was always going to follow in their footsteps.

That said, she didn’t really have a Plan B either.

“It wasn’t always acting, but I doubt there was ever really a Plan B,” Bacon admits.

“It was more like a No Plan. I decided I wanted to be an actor when I dropped out of college after two years, so I was around 20. But I have never been a super future-looking person – I don’t make big plans or goals or whatever.”

Bacon, the daughter of former teen heart-throb Kevin Bacon and The Closer star Kyra Sedgwick had actually made her acting debut a decade earlier playing 10-year-old version of her mother’s character in Loverboy.

Kyra Sedgwick, Sosie Bacon, and Kevin Bacon attend the Golden Globe Awards in 2014 in Beverly Hills, California. Picture: Getty Images

The 2005 drama was something of a family affair – directed by her dad and also featuring older brother Travis – but to the young Sosie it was just an amusing detour from school life in New York.

“That was just fun,” she says.

“I was young and in school and I cared much more about school and my friends and stuff. I grew up in New York so it wasn’t something that people did and I didn’t ever want to stop school for that. I wanted to go to school dances – I didn’t want that life when I was younger and I am happy that I took the time to decide.”

Plus, she’d seen first-hand that the life of a working actor can be a tough path to follow and that it wasn’t all red carpets and limousines.

“For sure,” she agrees, with a laugh.

“I was an early jaded person.”

Sosie Bacon in the thriller Smile.

And while Bacon and Sedgwick were “wonderful and supportive” of her eventual decision to pursue acting, the most valuable advice they gave her and her brother was to follow her own path.

“They also taught us independence,” she says.

“We have been making our own choices forever and that has a lot of strength in it.”

Ever since, Bacon has been steadily carving out a TV and film career, with supporting roles in the controversial teen suicide drama 13 Reasons Why, rom-com The Last Summer, crime drama Mare of Easttown, and this year’s comedy As We See It.

But now she’s stepping up a notch with her first lead film role in the coming horror film, Smile.

Bacon says that being No. 1 on the call sheet for a film comes with a certain responsibility and that her experiences watching Emmy-winner Kate Winslet on the Covid-interrupted Mare Of Easttown shoot held her in good stead for what to expect and how to behave.

“I have done so many supporting roles but Smile is my first lead,” Bacon says.

Sosie Bacon and Kyle Gallner star in the new horror film Smile.

“I have an immense amount respect for Kate and what she did and how she handles herself as No. 1 and does so much work with such grace. That’s what I would dream to be. It’s a tough role to fill because you are managing a lot. So, when I look back on it now with all the experience I have had since then, I am like ‘she’s a badass – and I want to be her’. She is my role model.”

In Smile, Bacon plays a doctor who works in the emergency psychiatric ward of a hospital, whose life begins to unravel and descend into terror after she witnesses a bizarre and traumatic incident involving a patient.

The horror genre has been part of Bacon’s life for decades, ever since her older brother used to terrify her by jump-scaring the six-year-old Sosie around the house while wearing a Michael Myers Halloween mask.

As a teenager, Bacon and her friends would see every horror movie they could get into – from Saw to The Ring – revelling in the communal feeling of all being terrified together.

“I think it makes so much sense,” Bacon says of the enduring appeal of horror.

“Think about the things we do for fun, whether you ride motor cycles or surf or ride horses, that adrenaline rush makes us feel alive. And that anticipation and excitement of when is the jump scare going to come, that just makes it giddy and fun. It makes a lot of sense to me in terms of the human psyche – things that are dangerous and scary are appealing.”

Sosie Bacon in a scene from Smile.

In more recent years, she’s been enthralled by the evolution of the genre and how filmmakers such as Jordan Peele (Get Out, Nope) and Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) are “commenting on so many things that are difficult to comment on”, from race to trauma to mental illness.

“I think Jordan Peele pretty much reinvented the genre,” she says.

“And it’s always been a place to talk about things that are hard to talk about.”

Bacon is wary about giving too much away about Smile, which was written and directed by first-time feature film-maker Parker Finn and also stars Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner and Aussie Caitlin Stasey.

It was initially due to be released to streaming, but strong reactions from test screenings convinced studio Paramount to give a it a theatrical release instead.

But when pressed on what might have to offer beyond scares, Bacon says: “No matter how good a face we are putting on, trauma that we have experienced in our lives will come back. And childhood trauma or ancestral trauma lives within us and eventually we will have to contend with it.”

Smile opens in cinemas on Thursday.

Originally published as Sosie Bacon takes her first lead role in new horror film, Smile