Six Degrees Of Celebrity Charity
For some time, actor Kevin Bacon has been the focus of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, in which people connect him to virtually every other actor or actress in the industry simply because he has made so many movies.
Now Bacon, star of the 1980s classic "Footloose," has taken that game and turned it into a force for good.
He founded the Web-based charity, Sixdegrees.org, where people can donate to a celebrity's favorite charity, create their own charity link or bid on celebrity items on eBay.
"I felt like I hadn't done enough, I had given enough back," he told The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "I feel like I'm incredibly lucky for all the good things I have in this world. I looked at, you know, Paul Newman who makes salad dressing, hundreds of millions of dollars later has done incredible work, and Bono, a lot of people. So I sort of thought, well, what do I have that's connected to me? The game keeps coming up. "
Bacon, who is married to actress Kyra Sedgwick, launched the site at the Sundance Film Festival. He spent the first few days there recruiting fellow celebrities and is trying to make it as simple for them to join as possible.
The site has been up for a little over a week and has already raised over $70,000. Bacon will match up to $10,000 dollars for the top six earning non-celebrity badges.The Showbuzz: Sundance Film Festival Coverage
Visitors to Sixdegrees.org can click on a celebrity, find out what that his or her favorite charity is and then make a donation. Celebrities who sign up create badges to sponsor their charity. Once a user donates to the charity, he or she collects the badge. Alternatively, anyone can be the face of his or her own favorite charity and create a link or badge on the site.
A roster of A-listers, including Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Tyra Banks, Jessica Simpson and Kane West, already has badges on the Web site.
"There's a lot of people," he said. "We also have a cool thing we kicked off at Sundance, which is celebrity swag on eBay. So when people go to free gifting houses at Sundance, if they were hit with a little guilt, they can drop them off with us and we'll auction them off at eBay and give the money to charity."
Bacon, who said he plans to return to the big screen soon, has come a long way since the early 1990s when the game started. He used to think it was a joke at his expense.
"You know, that you could take a loser like me and connect me to Marlon Brando or Lawrence Oliver or something like that," he said. "It had this amazing hang time."
To see how you can donate to a celebrity charity, visit sixdegrees.org.