Kevin Bacon opened up about falling victim to Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme on Monday’s episode of the SmartLess podcast, hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.
During the interview, Bacon revealed that he and his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, had invested “most” of their money in Madoff.
“There’s obvious life lessons there. You know, if something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true,” Bacon said. “And when something like that happens, you know, you look at each other, then you go, ‘Well, that sucks. Let’s, roll up our sleeves and get to work,’ you know?”
The actor went on to express gratitude for his family, wife and career. “We’ve made it this far. Our kids are healthy. We’re healthy. We can still both work and certainly, you get angry and stuff, but I have to say that there were a lot of people who were much worse off than we were,” Bacon continued.
“Old people, people whose retirement funds were completely decimated. So there’s always gonna be somebody that’s gonna have it a lot worse than you,” he added. “Whatever the cliches … Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Bacon said.
This is the first time that the actor has spoken at length about his involvement in the scheme. He had previously commented on it in a 2017 interview with the Guardian, saying that “it was a bad day” and “we got through it together.” He then urged readers to consider the elderly people scammed by Madoff — the “real victims.”
The hosts asked Bacon if him and his family were able to recoup any of the money that they lost. Bacon said that they got “a portion of some money back,” but hinted that it wasn’t near the total amount that they had lost.
