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Kevin Bacon insists it “takes a lot of work” to be scared every day on a horror film shoot.

The 64-year-old actor portrays the villainous Owen Whistler in new movie ‘They/Them’ and has previously had parts in classics of the genre including ”Friday the 13th’, ‘Stir of Echoes’, ‘Tremors’, and he explained he much prefers the high stakes and physical action of such movies than “sitting around having a conversation and eating a sandwich” in a drama.

Asked why he likes making horror films, he told website Slash Film: “Well, the joy is that the stakes are so high. It’s good stuff for me to play. If you’re running for your life, or you’re trying to destroy some kind of evil force, or stabbing somebody or getting stabbed, whatever that happens to be, that’s just good stuff. That’s just stuff that you want to play.

“I’d rather be doing that than sitting around, having a conversation and eating a sandwich. Also, sometimes in horror, there’s a lot of physical stuff, which I also really like to get into. There’s not so much in ‘They/Them’.

“But it’s also, the challenge is different levels of fear because, especially if you’re a lead and you have to go through this step by step, to try to find a new way to be scared every day is really — that can be a lot of work.”

‘They/ Them’ is set in a gay conversion camp and Kevin loved the way his character slowly revealed his true self throughout the film.

He said: “Well, I think that he’s a manipulator, for one thing. He knows that group of people, they’re not there — maybe a couple of them are there because they kind of want to be there. I guess maybe the Stu character kind of wants to become more macho or whatever, but they’re also, at the very least, terrified to be there.

“He’s going to try to put them at ease as much as possible, and then see an opening, and then come in with the terror of it he ends up coming in with.

“It’s also a good exercise, because it means that if it gives me as a character development, a place to go, when you start to see just a little hint of the darkness, the anger, the fear, the dangerous nature of this character, when you see you can just put a little hint in there. And then just add a little bit more, a little bit later, and then just have it explode. It’s a fun place to go.”