- Who
- Harvey Keitel
- What
- 2.90805 total number
- Where
- United States ()
- When
The actor deemed to be at the "Centre of the Hollywood Universe" is Harvey Keitel (USA), who, according to the Bacon Oracle, has a score of 2.90805. The Oracle, created by computer scientist Brett Tjaden in 1996, determines the interconnectedness of movie actors and actresses listed in Wikipedia, with a low score equating to more connections. The algorithm was designed to test the concept of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", the popular notion that the Footloose star was the most connected actor; it was discovered, however, that Mr Bacon was not even in the top 100 actors.
The "Oracle of Bacon" is an algorithm – named after American actor Kevin Bacon – that maps the relationships between more than 562,600 actors and actresses in Wikipedia. The first iteration of the code was written in 1996 by Brett Tjaden while a graduate student at the University of Virginia, USA, to test the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" - the widely held notion that the actor Kevin Bacon could be linked in the fewest number of steps to any other actor in Hollywood. A "Bacon Number" was determined for every performer based on their working relationship with Bacon (who correspondingly has a Bacon Number of 0), with the lower the number meaning the fewer degrees of separation. It was realized that the same algorithm could also be used to determine who actually is the best connected actor overall. It was discovered that, contrary to popular belief, Bacon was not the Centre of the Hollywood Universe; indeed, as of May 2020, there were 542 actors closer to the centre than him.
The lowest scoring actor overall is currently Lord of the Rings and Star Wars star Christopher Lee (d. 2015).
