Kevin Bacon revealed how he and wife Kyra Sedgwick bounced back after almost being financially ruined after their involvement with Bernie Madoff.
The actor was a guest on Monday’s episode of the Smartless podcast, hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes, during which he confessed that at one point they “had most of our money in [Bernie] Madoff.” Madoff is considered to be the perpetrator of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, taking around $64.8 billion of his victims’ money. Bacon revealed that he and Sedgwick got a “portion” of their losses returned to them following Madoff’s trial, but that they still lost a very sizable sum.
Madoff was arrested in December 2008 on allegations that his company, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, had stolen billions of dollars from individuals, businesses, and charities. Following the disgraced financier’s sentencing, the Madoff Victim Fund was established in an attempt to restore some of those lost assets to all those impacted. To date, 40,454 victims have received payouts and assistance in excess of $4.078 billion. In April 2021, Madoff died at age 82 while serving his 150-year prison sentence.
Bacon told the podcast hosts of the experience, “Certainly, you get angry and stuff, but I have to say, there were a lot of people who were much worse off than we were—old people, people whose retirement funds were completely decimated. So there’s always going to be somebody that’s going to have it a lot worse than you.” The actor said that he and his wife just chose to focus on their family and all the positive things they still had in their life instead of this financial loss. “When something like that happens, you look at each other and you go, ‘Well, that sucks, and let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work,’” he said. “We’ve made it this far, our kids are healthy, we’re healthy, you know? Let’s look at what we have that’s good. We can still both work.” Bacon added, “I think people will be not happy to hear me whining about money.” But at the end of the day, there are “obvious life lessons there: If something is too good to be true, it’s too good to be true,” he said.