Kevin Bacon’s First (German) Class

Photo: The Howard Stern Show

Kevin Bacon stopped by to promote his new Fox series, “The Following.” It’d been awhile since they last spoke, so Howard took the opportunity to rave about Kevin’s performance as Sebastian Shaw in “X-Men: First Class.”

“You deserved an Academy Award … at least a nomination,” Howard told Kevin. “Why do you laugh when I say that? You were the greatest villain in that. And it was seamless. I believed your character. […] I believed you were this bad motherf***er.”

Kevin said it was one of the most difficult roles he’d ever attempted. Since many of his scenes were in German, the studio sent over its best language instructor. Sort of.

“A $150 million movie and they sent me a dog trainer,” Kevin told Howard with a laugh. “She started working with the dog!” The trainer was good with humans, too. After Kevin nailed his first German scene, the film’s director approached him with a small script change.

“He said, ‘You know that scene when you’re talking with the Russian general? I want you to do that one in Russian,'” Kevin recalled.