From Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick to Dan and Eugene Levy, Hollywood families who act together, stay together

Not all nepo babies are the same.

If you’ve watched one squirm and get defensive about the privileges they enjoyed in the exclusive industries their parents have helped open doors to, then you’ve rolled your eyes.

Others are more thoughtful about it, and understand the circumstances of their birth did have an effect, and why the public might be interested in those particular links – take a bow, Maya Hawke, you’re a class act.

Then there is the Bacon-Sedgwick clan who have fully embraced their connections to each other and made a film together titled, naturally, Family Movie.

Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, married since 1988, directed and produced the movie together, and also star in it with their kids, actor Sosie Bacon (13 Reasons Why, Mare of Easttown) and musician Travis Bacon.

The horror-comedy is about a family of filmmakers, the Smiths, who are mounting a low-budget slasher movie when a body turns up on set, turning the whole endeavour into a real-life killing spree.

It’s meant to be very meta, and the script was written by Dan Beers, who was commissioned by Bacon and Segdwick, and Beers also spent time with each of the foursome separately so he could layer in some of their real family dynamics.

At the time of Family Movie’s premiere at SXSW earlier this year, Sedgwick told The Hollywood Reporter, “I admire my family of artists so much and got to see different sides. I’ve seen Kevin on set.

“I’ve seen the way he conducts himself on set, but watching the kids and the way they conducted themselves just as humans and colleagues and artists? It’s very rare that, as a parent especially of an adult child, that you get to watch them in the world.”

This is not the first time they family have worked together, but it is the first they’ve been so enmeshed on screen. Bacon’s first feature he directed was a 2005 movie called Loverboy, which he and Sedgwick starred in, and Sosie made her screen debut playing the younger version of her mum while Travis had a small role as a neighbour.

There doesn’t appear to be an Australian distributor attached but it’s just been sold in the US for an April release.

Sosie and Sedgwick playing different ages of the same character is a long-standing tradition in movies and TV shows.

Some of these have been small cameos or little one-offs, such as when Tina Fey’s oldest daughter, Alice Richmond, played a young Liz Lemon in a flashback on 30 Rock, or Bill Paxton’s son, James, did that one time in an episode of Agents of Shield, three years after Bill died.

Right now, Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt are playing the same character in different timelines in the Godzilla spin-off series, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and in a rare instance, both Russells have a lot of screen time because this is a series that jumps back and forth between the present and the past.

Martin Sheen has done it with two of his sons – Emilio Estevez, who looks more like dad than Charlie Sheen, did it in a 1989 TV movie called Nightbreaker and in home video footage of Jed Bartlett on The West Wing, while Charlie got the call up for 2002 Visa ad.

Emilio also played Martin’s onscreen son in The Way, a movie he wrote and directed in 2010, while dad has also starred in Emilio’s other films he directed, The War at Home and Bobby while Charlie starred in Men at Work, his brother’s second feature.

Daughter Renee Estevez had a recurring role as assistant Nancy in all seven seasons of The West Wing.

Laurie Metcalf originated the role of Sheldon Cooper’s mother on The Big Bang Theory, and then when the producers went to make the prequel, they cast Metcalf’s daughter, Zoe Perry, for the same role. Not only do they look like, they’re also voice twins.

One of the memorable performances is when O’Shea Jackson played his father Ice Cube, not a character his father was also playing, but the real him, in Straight Outta Compton, the biopic about NWA, the pioneering rap group his dad was in with Dr Dre, Easy-E, DJ Yella and MC Ren.

Actor Geraldine Chaplin played her own mother, Oona, in the 1992 biopic about her father, Charlie Chaplin. As a child, she had an uncredited role as “little girl in opening scene” in her dad’s 1952 masterpiece, Limelight.

Tom Hanks and his son Colin both played Mr Rogers, the American children’s entertainer, but in different projects – dad in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood and son in an episode of Drunk History. They both pulled off that red cardigan convincingly.

Tom’s youngest son, Truman Hanks, played a younger version of his dad in A Man Called Otto.

The examples of real-life family playing fictional families are ample, and the Douglases managed to fit three generations in in the 2003 movie It Runs in the Family, where Kirk, Michael and Cameron Douglas portrayed grandfather, father and son.

Ben Stiller’s first movie, Hot Pursuit, was one in which he played his father Jerry’s onscreen son, and Jaden Smith’s feature debut was as his dad Will’s son in The Pursuit of Happyness.

Two Gleesons – father Brendan and son Domhnall – were in the Harry Potter movies, but played unrelated characters, Mad Eye Moody and Bill Weasley, respective, but Domhnall and his brother Brian played onscreen freres on Mother!.

The Redgraves are acting royalty in the UK, spanning five generations and dating back to its founder Roy Redgrave in the 19th century. Vanessa Redgrave and sister Lynn avoided appearing onscreen together until the 2005 film The White Countess, in which they played onscreen sisters.

Vanessa’s daughter, Natasha Richardson, married Liam Neeson and they had a son, Micheal Richardson, and the two of them have played father-and-son twice – once in Cold Pursuit, and the second time in Made in Italy. The latter was a family drama in which the two have to work out how to restore their relationship after the death of his wife/his mother. Natasha died in a skiing accident in 2009.

So many of the corners of the entertainment industry is a family business and sometimes family will work together – just ask the Sandlers, the Paltrows, the Sarandons, the Sutherlands, the Derns, the Lowes, Streep/Gummers, Andie MacDowell and Margaret Qualley, Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd, Thandiwe Newton and Nico Parker, the Fondas, the Wayans and, of course, the Levys.

What would Schitt’s Creek be if Eugene and Dan didn’t decide to go it together, and brought sister Sarah along for the ride.