Denis Leary recently revealed a hilarious story about a bad experience he had with an Uber driver in New York City. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon, the former Rescue Me star revealed people often recognize him as a celebrity but think he is someone else. Fallon asked Leary if he ever rolls with it and pretends to be one of his Hollywood lookalikes, and Leary surprisingly revealed he sometimes does. Leary said,
The worst one I ever did was this summer. It was, like, 190 degrees in New York. I was leaving the office, going home to the apartment. It was only going to take me, like, you know, 15 minutes, and I called an Uber driver, and I get in the car. Maybe a block [went by] and he goes, 'Hey, you.' And I go, 'Yeah.' And he goes, 'Footloose!'
That's right. The Uber driver had mistaken Denis Leary for Footloose star Kevin Bacon. Leary told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon audience he decided not to correct the driver. Instead, Leary shrugged off the confusion and pretended to be Bacon. At one point, Leary even told the driver he (i.e., "fake Bacon") had come up with all of Bacon's choreography in Footloose.
Unfortunately, Denis Leary said the Uber driver started pushing the issue. The driver called his wife on the phone because she was a big Kevin Bacon fan. He passed the phone to Leary, who got on the line and listened to the driver's wife express her undying love for Bacon before saying she preferred Bacon's wife, Kyra Sedgwick.
In an amusing twist, the comment from the Uber driver's wife bruised Denis Leary's ego. Well, perhaps more accurately, it hurt the ego of Leary's "fake Kevin Bacon." Leary began sticking up for Bacon whenever the driver's wife mentioned the career accomplishments of Kyra Sedgwick. Apparently, Leary's responses made the woman second guess the identity of the person on the phone, so she had Leary give the phone back to her husband. The driver spoke to her for a moment, continued driving, and then looked up a Google image of Bacon. Discovering the trick, the driver pulled over and kicked out Leary, who is not Bacon but is still a star all the same.
That story was hilarious, but before telling it, Denis Leary also listed off some of the other stars whom people think he is. Leary said he most often gets Willem Dafoe. Kevin Bacon is the runner-up, but Leary also gets others, like Bryan Adams, Jon Bon Jovi, and Christopher Walken. In fact, Leary said he also gets mistaken for Ellen DeGeneres and Jane Lynch! You might think those last two sound like a joke, but the way Leary mentioned their names seemed a little bit too specific for them not to be real. The whole bit was funny. Check it out:
Denis Leary's interview with Jimmy Fallon was absolutely hilarious. It makes me wonder how often other stars get mistaken for one another. Who knows? Maybe people sometimes think Kevin Bacon is Leary, too!
