“People got to know...”

“It felt like a downward slide from Footloose. At that point in my life, I was really just looking at leads because that was what I thought I was supposed to be doing. And Paula [Wagner] said to me, 'I remember seeing you,‘—actually before she represented me—’in a lot of theater in New York,' because that's really where I started, as an Off-Broadway stage actor. I was doing edgy character stuff, not trying to really carry things. In some cases it was a major role, but at other times it was just darker, edgier, sometimes funny stuff—like gay hookers and junkies. And she said, 'I think you need to get back into that in the movies. Don't just focus on leads.'

”The first thing Paula suggested was that I go and sit with Oliver Stone. He had a part that she thought I could do in JFK. She represented Oliver as well at the time. ...

“It was one of those special times when I could actually feel a change within myself, like ‘Okay, this is what I need to do, not all the time, but this is the type of actor that I want to be. I’ve been a character actor pretending to be a leading man. That can't continue.' And I have Paula to thank for that. Afterward, the tide changed and that led to A Few Good Men, Murder in the First, and River Wild. The movies got better, and the parts got better.”

— Kevin Bacon in the oral history “Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency,” by James Andrew Miller. The early pages of the book are fun, but it gets bogged down a bit in the 1990s, and not enough context is given. I began to Google the principles to find out what happened to them.