Samuel L. Jackson, not Kevin Bacon, is the true center of Hollywood
The Real Kevin Bacon
The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game assumes Bacon sits at the heart of Hollywood, but a data analysis of 169,000 actors finds he ranks only 175th by remoteness, averaging 2.28 degrees. Samuel L. Jackson holds the real crown at 2.09, followed by Willem Dafoe and Robert De Niro. Film count and prolific co-stars drive the score, and 10,000 simulations point to Chloë Grace Moretz as Gen Z's most likely successor.
Kevin Bacon could have been the center of Hollywood if he were born 20 years earlier.