‘Footloose’ Star Lori Singer Opens Up About “Magical” First Kiss With Kevin Bacon: “It Was So Real”

Actress Lori Singer was 27 years old when she landed the first film role of her career in the 1984 classic Footloose, starring opposite Kevin Bacon. But she remembers filming with the star like it was yesterday.

Speaking to the New York Post, Singer recalled exactly how it felt to film the famous kissing scene they shared in the movie.

“What happened is they had a long lens. It was probably 12 feet, if there is such a thing as a lens like that. And they were way far away from us, like a football stadium away,” she recalled. “Kevin and I had total privacy [for the kiss]. We just lived the scene the best way that we knew how. And, with all of our emotions and feelings from everything that had happened, that genuinely was the first time we kissed.” 

According to Singer, she felt that “magnetic” chemistry with Bacon from the first time they met on the Paramount soundstage.

“We shook hands, and it was just magnetic at that moment. It was like electricity,” she explained. “Very much like in the film when we first see each other. I think it just built from there. There was a lot of daredevil stuff. A lot of things happening and building to the kiss. That’s why it was so real, I think, because the time and the true experiences built to that moment.”

Singer also credited cinematographer Ric Waite and director Herbert Ross with capturing the “electricity” of the moment.

“What you feel does not always translate — but it did in this case, because we had the masterful Herb Ross and Ric Waite . . . they caught it,” she said. “And then you add the explosive Kenny Loggins [song], and you’ve got something magical.”

The actress explained that she needed to break her contract on Fame in order to take the role, which she did with Debbie Allen‘s blessing. But there were no hard feelings as she joined “another family” on Footloose, she said.

“Everyone was happy that I was going on to do a film. It was a huge family. And I was stepping into another family, now with John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest, and falling in love with Kevin,” she said. “It was awesome. And it was wild.”

In a separate interview with People, Singer revealed that she had come up with her own idea for a follow-up film starring her and Bacon, in which her character reunites with Bacon after he settled down in the small town.

“I mean, I just played with that idea years ago and we were talking about it and joking,” she said. “But that was just something for us to meet on and talk about and laugh about.”

She also slightly agreed with a comment Bacon made on his podcast, where he said a Footloose sequel “would be a disaster.”

“I don’t know, it was so pure for what it is that I kind of agree with Kevin,” she said. “It’s very pure in what it expresses, but you never know.”