Seth Green

You’ve no doubt played (or heard of) that game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. It was popular back when I was in High School (circa ‘96) and refers to the idea that any actor in film history can be connected to Bacon through movie roles.

The goal of the game is to connect a given actor to Bacon using the fewest number of links, which is then deemed his or her Bacon number.

It’s frighteningly a very easy game. According to Wikipedia, as of December 2005, there were 9,692 actors in the IMDb who could not be linked to Kevin Bacon out of the total of 418,468!

Anyways, Kevin is taking this popular (and admittedly maddening) spin on his acting career and turning it into a force for good.

The new site, called SixDegrees.org, allows visitors to learn about and donate to celebrities’ favorite charities.

Stars including Bacon’s wife, Kyra Sedgwick, Nicole Kidman, Tyra Banks, Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, Seth Green and Rosie O’Donnell have all signed on to highlight their favorite charities.

Visitors to the site can get a celebrity badge that they can then post to their own Website or blog, thereby spreading the word about a given star’s pet cause.

For all you non-celebrities, the site also gives you the opportunity to highlight your own charities and create a badge that’s representative of the cause.

Bacon has vowed to match the charitable dollars raised by the six top non famous fundraisers by March 31 up to $10,000.

You can hit the site here and get busy browsing; but no doubt this concept is going to grow in the coming months.

Bacon plans on officially launching the site this week at the Sundance Festival; but already the site has accepted almost $51,000 in donations. Damn. He’s on to something here.

“It is my hope that Six Degrees will soon be something more than a game or a gimmick,” Bacon said.

“It will also be a force for good, by bringing a social conscience to social networking.” Very cool. More updates as they come.