Bacon shared a 1983 photo from ‘The Slab Boys,’ a Broadway play which also starred Sean Penn and Val Kilmer

NEED TO KNOW

• Kevin Bacon is sharing a major throwback to the early days of his career
• Bacon shared a 1983 photo from The Slab Boys, a Broadway play that also starred Sean Penn and Val Kilmer
• Bacon later called working with Kilmer, who died in 2025, one of the great experiences of his life

Kevin Bacon is sharing a major throwback to the early days of his career, when he worked alongside some major stars.

In an Instagram post shared on Friday, Nov. 6, the Footloose star, 68, looked back on a 1983 Broadway performance in which he acted alongside Sean Penn and Val Kilmer.

“Before a whole lot of things…” Bacon captioned the black and white photo. “There was this Broadway show with me, Sean Penn, Jackie Earl Haley and Val Kilmer. It was 1983, and we were starring in a play called The Slab Boys, about a group of young guys working in a Scottish carpet factory, dreaming of bigger things.”

The photo showed Bacon, Penn, Haley and Kilmer, all dressed casually in T-shirts and jeans, sharing some smoldering looks with the camera.

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According to a synopsis, the John Byrne-authored play — which ran for about one month at the Playhouse Theatre in New York City in 1983 — is set in a paint-spattered carpet manufacturing dungeon where apprentice designers mix and grind colors for the design department amid difficulties in their personal lives.

Bacon and One Battle After Another star Penn, 66, would go on to act together again in 2003, in the Oscar-nominated crime drama Mystic River. Penn starred as convenience store owner Jimmy Markum and Kevin Bacon as homicide detective Sean Devine, who both work to investigate the murder of Markum’s daughter.

Throwback footage of Penn, Bacon and Kilmer also made the rounds back in 2021, when Kilmer shared the trailer for his documentary Val, which details his life, career and recovery from throat cancer.

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In the first trailer for the film, Kilmer, who died at age 65 on April 1, 2025, shared an intimate look at his life through home movies — including both Bacon and Penn.

At one point in the trailer, the Top Gun actor uses his voice box to communicate how he has “tried to see the world as one piece of life.”

In another scene, he says, “I’m still recovering and it is difficult to talk and to be understood. But I want to tell my story more than ever.”

In the wake of Kilmer’s death, Bacon reflected on working with the star on an April 2025 episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, telling the host that they had a “great experience” working together.

“Val, I think it’s one of the first things he did out of Juilliard,” the Friday the 13th actor shared. “It was great. I just always look at that as one of the great experiences of my life, getting the chance to know him.”

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