Kevin Bacon talks losing ‘most’ of fortune to Bernie Madoff: ‘There’s obvious life lessons’

Actor Kevin Bacon spoke out about his family’s experience losing the bulk of its money when disgraced fraudster Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme unraveled during the Great Recession.

Bacon and his wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick, lost an unspecified fortune in the now-deceased Madoff’s scheme, which ranks as the largest financial fraud of its kind in US history.

Bacon detailed the incident during an appearance on Monday’s episode of the “SmartLess” podcast, hosted by fellow actors Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes.

“We had most of our money in Madoff,” Bacon said. “There’s obvious life lessons there – if something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.”

“When something like that happens, you look at each other and you go, ‘well, that sucks and let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.’ We’ve made it this far, our kids are healthy, we’re healthy, you know? Let’s look at what we have that’s good. We can still both work,” he added.

Bacon and Sedgwick have not revealed how much money they lost in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, though various news reports have placed the figure in the millions of dollars. To date, the Madoff Victim Fund has returned more than $4 billion to more than 40,000 victims impacted by the scheme, according to its website.

“Certainly, you get angry and stuff, but I have to say, there were a lot of people who were much worse off than we were – old people, people whose retirement funds were completely decimated. So there’s always going to be somebody that’s going to have it a lot worse than you,” Bacon added.

Bacon, who is best known for his roles in classic films such as “A Few Good Men” and “Footloose,” said his family managed to recover “a portion of some money back,” though he did not provide specifics.

“There’s the money that you put into something and there’s the money that you’ve, in theory, accrued with interest over years, but that’s not real. That’s just a number that was on a piece of paper,” Bacon said.

“I think people will be not happy to hear me whining about money,” he added.

Bacon and Sedgwick were just two of a group of many celebrities who were snared in Madoff’s scheme. Other well-known victims included baseball legend Sandy Koufax, former Mets owner Fred Wilpon and director Steven Spielberg.

Bacon previously spoke about his experience with Madoff in a 2017 interview with The Guardian.

“It was a bad day. But pretty quickly we were able to see all the things we had as opposed to whatever we lost, and those are the biggest cliches: children, health, love, a nice home. So we got through it together. I don’t think about Madoff, like, at all, Bacon said at the time.

In 2021, Madoff died in prison at age 82 while housed at a secure federal medical center in Butner, NC. He was serving a 150-year sentence in connection to his various financial crimes.