Six degrees, measured· concept in progress

Where do you actually stand in Hollywood?

The game assumed every role is equal. They are not. We rebuilt the network from 259,489 actors across 20,236 films, weighting every connection by billing order. The map that appears is not the one the game promised.

Try or — full search arrives with the dashboard.
IN A CAST OF 259,489
Kevin Bacon
Collaborative core · the 1.5%
141st
Shortest
path
181st
Weighted
PageRank
202nd
Betweenness
The game was named after a convenient actor, not a central one. He earned the core the long way: 64 films of sustained billing.
The industry is a pyramid with a locked penthouse

Gaussian mixture modeling over the centrality profiles reveals the strata the game never mentioned. Almost everyone who has ever acted is one film deep.

The collaborative core 3,965 actors · 1.5% · median 25 films Working Hollywood careers, not stardom The periphery 69% appear in one film, ever Every actor who ever worked, 1950–2025
Not all paths through Hollywood weigh the same

Sample routes between the same two actors. Weight is accumulated billing prominence: the strongest route runs through the biggest shared roles, not the shortest list of names.

Route through Gary Oldman
10.98
Route through Tony Hale
6.73
Route through Christian Slater
4.53

A concept page for the interactive dashboard. Everything above comes from the CAC 2026 paper. The finished piece searches all 259,489 actors: your tier, your strongest collaborators, your weighted path to the actual center of Hollywood, and a card you can keep.