‘Home Alone’ Turns 35 And Macaulay Culkin? The Kid Is All Right

EXCLUSIVE: If he ever resented the burden of reaching a career peak at age 10 when Home Alone and that adorable face made him the most famous pint-sized Hollywood star since Shirley Temple, Macaulay Culkin has come to grips with all of it. There is no evidence of regret or any bitterness in being forever tethered to what many feel replaced It’s A Wonderful Life as the quintessential Christmas film, a perennial that hit its 35th anniversary this month.

I sat down at the London Hotel with Culkin, who is now 45, with a scruffy beard that can’t shield your desire to scream “Kevin!’ He’s got two young sons of his own, and he had just finished a press for the post-apocalyptic series Fallout. He joined in Season Two at the suggestion of his wife, Brenda Song, because they so liked watching the show together. She was away this day, meaning Culkin would go straight to pick up his kids and be on watch duty that night. Though he was sure Brenda wouldn’t approve, for those kids – he calls them Irish twins because they’re 15 months apart with the oldest age four — Happy Meals would be on the menu. He was pretty sure he could avoid being ratted out to mom by not telling them to make sure they didn’t tell her. Asking them not to tell her would guarantee it would be the first things out of their mouths when she got home. And how else could she possibly find out?

After a trial run last year, Culkin was readying for a 14 cross country date Home Alone roadshow that began this week. The fun begins with a showing of the original 1990 film on a big movie screen, followed by Culkin telling some fun stories and reminiscing with an audience that would likely constitute what the movie business calls Four Quadrant.

I’ve been at this long enough to recall having broken the story that Warner Bros had put Home Alone in turnaround, because studio brass and writer/producer John Hughes were two million dollars apart. This was when the film was becoming the holiday season’s long running global smash, on course to a worldwide gross upwards of $475 million (the sequel grossed near $360 million). That news created shockwaves at Warner Bros, which didn’t put any projects in turnaround for years. Joe Roth, who’d taken the reins at Fox, burnished his run by swooping in and keeping the film’s production start back on track.

“It was actually a $1 million difference,” recalled Christopher Columbus, director of the first two movies. I’d heard there were already bruised feeling between that WB regime and Hughes, who was getting away from directing kid comedies, after turning out those teen angst classics like Sixteen Candles.

“It was a different time and maybe a million dollars seemed like a lot of money for something they saw as a B picture,” he said. “They did not want to go to $19 million, but Joe came in and turned it around. I was squarely in director’s jail, as Heartbreak Hotel was a total flop at Touchstone. Then, John Hughes put me into Christmas Vacation, but I knew I was not going to get along with Chevy Chase and I took myself out and John put me into Home Alone. My career was clearly on thin ice, and when Warners let it go, we fired everybody on a Friday. Because Joe moved so quickly, we rehired the whole crew back on Monday. It was that quick.”

Columbus sparked to the film’s live action Road Runner premise, and while he had no inkling it might eclipse his hero Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life as this generation’s quintessential Christmas film, his instinct was to not stamp it in any time period. He would strive for a timelessness that would make it feel fresh, even if you watched 35 years later. He emulated that style on blockbusters Harry Potter and Mrs. Doubtfire. Even though Hughes wrote the movie for Culkin after discovering the actor in Uncle Buck, the director needed to be convinced.

“John said, well, I got this kid who was in Uncle Buck, I wrote this for him, you should probably use him,” Columbus said. “I thought, yeah, but…I ended up seeing 500 kids. And then finally I met Macaulay, after all of that. He was just above and beyond a talent level; he was a movie star. This kid was sitting in a room, and you’re like, you’re a movie star. He was just the perfect kid for this movie.”

Like every movie you look back on that is a big hit, there is a lot of plodding through a dark room, hoping your instincts are sound. Though he usually played a tough guy, Joe Pesci had a gleam in his eye to offset a menacing presence, and his pairing with Daniel Stern as the goofy member of the home invader duo was vital. Columbus said that it almost did not happen.  

“Daniel was someone we wanted and the studio wouldn’t pay for him,” Columbus said. “So we cast another actor. When I did the screen test with Pesci, it was a disaster I had to go back to Joe Roth and say, ‘please, we need Daniel Stern in this movie. When we saw the chemistry between Dan and Joe together that first time, we knew it was money well spent. It was kind of a tonal imbalance. People ask me about tone, all the time. Yes, they brought it into Road Runner territory, but it is also unabashedly sentimental and moving. That is Macaulay’s performance. He felt like a real kid; his ears kind of bent to the side. He had something that was not like the typical Disney Hollywood kid. I can talk about the other stuff that surrounds the movie, but it’s his performance, the way the audience connected to him in a subconscious way. It was him.”

While Columbus doesn’t keep in close touch with Culkin, it does him good that when their paths cross, the director sees a happy young father.

 “The last time I saw him was at the Vanity Fair Party after the Oscars, and I ran into him and Catherine O’Hara,” Columbus said. “We’ve been texting back and forth, and I’m going to do this Academy screening with him, so I’ll have a chance to spend some time with him before and afterwards. But I think he’s incredibly well adjusted. He seems like a great father. He understands what it means to be a good father because of all of the awful things he had to put up with, as a kid.

He was talking about the power dynamics of Macaulay’s father Kit, who acted as his manager. Macaulay hasn’t talked to his father in years, but he wasn’t tarred by Kit’s power-hungry my-way-or-the-highway strongarming, using his solid gold son as his leverage. The stories included the time he forced the issue on Macaulay and Elijah Wood switching parts in the drama The Good Son, right before production began. The studio had no choice but to capitulate.   

“It’s textbook stuff, Mike,” Columbus said. “A lot of kids who have bad experiences with their father or their parents, sometimes they act out and they repeat that pattern. But he seems to be one of those guys who didn’t. He seems to have learned from those mistakes and has become really a great parent.”

Macaulay’s path differed from Kieran, the younger brother who grew up in the same household turbulence, and the burden to be a cute onscreen kid at a time most get to be kids. Kieran chose an actor’s life, the success of which manifested itself in an Emmy for Succession, and an Oscar for the Jesse Eisenberg-directed A Real Pain. He has shown paternal instincts similar to those evidenced by Macaulay. Both his acceptance speeches became direct appeals to his wife, Jazz Charlton, to have another child (they welcomed their third, after the Oscar win).

Macaulay took a more circuitous career path in adulthood that includes stints as a musician. As he discusses here, Macaulay has always been good at acting, retiring and un-retiring depending on mood and other life interests he could not indulge as a child working nonstop.     

“Macaulay’s career is exactly what he wants it to be,” Columbus said. “I believe he’s an incredibly good actor, and he just hasn’t, for whatever reason, taken the road that Kieran has. I think he’s as good as Kieran. Maybe he just hasn’t found that role yet. You can’t guarantee anything in this business, but the one thing I can guarantee is, he’ll find that role and surprise everybody. I don’t know what it’s going to be, but he’s got some time to do it.”

What does Macaulay Culkin want, 35 years after that blockbuster film? Let’s ask him.

DEADLINE: What do you recall when Warner Bros and John Hughes could not agree on budget, and suddenly you were working for Fox?

MACAULAY CULKIN: I remember being in the lobby of the school we filmed in, it was the same Chicago high school we used for Uncle Buck. There was a poster up in the lobby and you walked by it and saw all over it that Warner Brothers owned it. And one day I showed up for work when we were in preproduction. It wasn’t there. By the afternoon, it was back and Fox was on it. No kidding. It didn’t take them long to be able to find a new home for it, and it didn’t take them long to take the poster down as soon as it was in turnaround, and get a new one.  

After that, it was a Hughes production kind of, but it was really Chris’s production. John Hughes took his hand off the steering wheel on this thing and really let Chris go. I was very surprised.

DEADLINE: Why? He had a clear vision, and a young actor he discovered…

CULKIN: After Sixteen Candles, Uncle Buck, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains & Automobiles and the rest, I think he was getting tired of the director’s chair. He’d had enough of it. He only directed one more after Uncle Buck, Curly Sue and then boom. That was it. He still was churning out scripts and producing, though.

DEADLINE: I recall the Fox execs telling me they knew there was a good chance this would change the life of the actor playing Kevin. They felt you would be able to survive it. What prompted me to do this was seeing a video of you and your wife. You seemed…happy. I’d seen so many kid actors head down reckless roads after being fed through the Hollywood woodchipper, and being used up and unable to cope without the grounding the rest of us got by being kids and screwing up in a low profile manner. But you looked quite content. Then I heard you were taking Home Alone on the road, which to me meant you’ve accepted that that film might be the most memorable thing you do as a celebrity, this movie that to has become the quintessential Christmas movie.

CULKIN: How does that feel? It feels really cool. I tried out the show last year, and it was fun. I thought, the movie now is 35 years old, and how many times has anyone seen it in a theater, surrounded by other people? It’s one thing to laugh about it in your living room with your kids. It’s another to bring your kids to a theater and dark and screen with like-minded people laughing at the same jokes. We were able to bring it to life in a way that is really fun. What I noticed when I tried it out last year was how struck I was at just the reception from people. I’m 45 now, and for other 45 year olds out there, it’s nostalgic. But now they’re showing their kids the same way that I show it to my kids.

DEADLINE: How do they process that is their dad up there, battling the bad guys?

CULKIN: I show that movie to my kids all the time. Man, they have no idea who they’re sitting next to, the entire time. They just go, oh, there’s Kevin. They call him Kevin Disney, because of Disney Plus which shows the little holiday trailer. Last night, I was putting my oldest to bed, and he wanted to see some family photos of my family and stuff. I don’t have a lot of albums lying around, but I was able to dig one up and he immediately gravitates towards the bottom left corner. And he goes, Hey, that kid looks like Kevin. Who is that? I go, that’s me. And he didn’t put it together. And I’m like, good. No, no, not yet. Not that. He just thinks I looked a lot like Kevin.

DEADLINE: It’s like Clark Kent, hiding Superman by wearing glasses. You’re going to wait him out, aren’t you?

CULKIN: Exactly. It’s going to hit him, one day. He’ll watch the movie and his system will go, wait a second. I’m awaiting the wait a second moment. I’m sure some kid at recess is going to spoil it for him, like, there is no Santa Claus, that kind of thing. I’m keeping the veil up for as long as possible. Hey, that kid looks like Kevin. I go, yeah, he sure does. But it’s fun to get it back on its feet and actually see it in front of getting people to be enthusiastic about it. I was struck at the reception people have. It has been 35 years. Kind of crazy.

DEADLINE: Are these theaters full of kids, their parents chasing them around like they’re herding cats?

CULKIN: No, no, no, no, no. It’s a proper theater setting. Boom, they show the movie. The moderator comes out, introduces me. I come out there and we do a fireside chat for a little bit, where he and I sit across from each other. He has some curated questions, and things like that. So we kind of ease things in here. He sets me up for some good anecdotes, like we’re playing volleyball and he’s setting it up so I can spike them down. We’ll pepper in some of the audience stuff, but you just don’t want to hand a hot mic to people.  

DEADLINE: How about a go-to anecdote, a treasured memory?

CULKIN: A treasured memory? I got all kinds of things. People forget that in the movie, Daniel Stern and Joe Peci barely share the screen with me. I’m in the movie Castaway, by myself, most of that movie. Is that true? At least Tom Hanks had a volleyball to talk to. I was just talking to the ether. There was the time they almost run me over in their van. And the whole end sequence. It was one of the last days of filming. They finally catch me, and they hang me up on the door. I’m dangling there, and they’re talking about the things they’re going to do to me. I’m going to smash your face with an iron. I’ll do this, and that. We’re rehearsing this, and I’m pretty vulnerable. I’m actually hung up there. Joe and Daniel, they want to run their lines, which is fine with me because I don’t have any lines in that scene. So I’m like, yeah, I would love to run lines with the guys. So I’m dangling there, and it gets to the part. Joe says, ‘I want to bite each one of these fingers off one at a time,’ which is such a grotesque kind of thing. He’s rehearsing it. And he bit me. He bit me for real. You see that little white mark right there [he presents his hand, and there’s a faint white mark] That’s Joe Pesci’s tooth mark. He bit the 9-year-old by mistake.

DEADLINE: How did he respond?

CULKIN: You should have seen his face. He’s a tough guy, he really is, and he just bit a 9-year-old who was dangling helplessly. Everyone went, no, no, no, no. I drew it back and went, ‘Ah.’ He didn’t say anything at first. Then, ‘oh, sorry about that kid.’ But it was definitely with a I-took-it-too-far-look on his face. I didn’t squeal on him. And I think I was always good in his book for that, because I didn’t squeal.

DEADLINE: You walked away with a souvenir…

CULKIN: Yeah. For life. Two years later, when we were filming the second one in New York, we had a little more screen time together. It was the last day of filming. We finally finished, and it was a marathon. The second one took five months to film, felt like for-fu*king-ever. He meets me at my trailer. He had never done that. He says, This was a good one, right? I said, yeah, it was good. He says, listen. I got a bottle of vino in my room. I’m going to open it up, let it breathe. Do you want to come and have a glass of vino with me?

I just looked at him, and I go, you do know I’m 10, right? He’s like, sure, but c’mon on. I was like, nah, man. I’m good. I’m good. Thanks though. Memories like that. And that’s the thing. These are the kind of stories I tell on this stage.

DEADLINE: How long did it take you to be comfortable wearing this legacy? Many people who starred as kids in hit films and TV shows want to get away from that identity. Maybe you acted out a bit, you took a musical detour, have taken long periods between films.  

CULKIN: I wouldn’t say I was running away from it, as much as I was trying to make my own way in the world, make my own mark and figure out what I want to do. I’ve quit Hollywood more times than I can remember. It was a curse and a blessing kind of deal. But in the past 10 years or so, I’ve realized, it’s out there, and it is what it is. It’s a big part of my legacy, one of the things that shaped me both personally and also the public perception of me. So I try not to run away from that really.  

DEADLINE: I recently did a Hamptons Film Festival panel with Jodie Foster who told me, she needed a break after all that came in a childhood filled with films including Taxi Driver. So she went to college…

CULKIN: Not just college, didn’t she go to Harvard?  

DEADLINE: Yale, actually. She told me college broadened her horizons, but her realization was that she hadn’t found anything she liked as much as the business she’d been exposed to at a young age. She came back with fire, winning two Oscars as an actress and becoming an accomplished producer. As you took you sabbatical, did you realize much the same thing?  

CULKIN: Yeah. I mean, here’s the thing. I always liked This is a line of work that found me. I didn’t find it. It’s like that. So yeah, I had to go on that journey. I had to go away awhile, after, I think, Richie Rich. I don’t think I did anything on screen for about seven or eight years, boom. Just with high school and messed around and stuff like that. I needed to float around a little bit outside, just figure out what I wanted to do. And again, I came to the conclusion that this was something that I found me, and maybe there’s a reason for that.  

DEADLINE: I can remember covering those early years of your career. People in Hollywood said, sweet kid, nightmare father. What was that reality like for you?  

CULKIN: Funny. At the time, you don’t really know any better. You just know what’s in front of you. It’s the hero’s journey kind of thing. I started, doing black box theater and other smaller gigs. I get a little bit bigger, and then bigger, and bigger. Until I become a big fat movie star. It’s not until you have perspective that you realize, oh, this is a very unique journey that I’ve been on. In terms of the way my father was, and at least when it comes to his reputation, I had no control over that.  

And when the time came around where I was saying, hey, I need a break, I wasn’t being heard because it was a gravy train with biscuit wheels. I’m sure it was that and they can’t stop it. Once I started getting older and had some more autonomy, I could walk away. I could do what I wanted. But for a while there, it was out of my control, and I lost the love for it. When I walked away, I didn’t think I was ever going to come back.

DEADLINE: It stopped being fun, and you were done?

CULKIN: Yeah, no more fun.

DEADLINE: And childhood is a time when you are supposed to have…

CULKIN: Fun. Exactly. And it was like, yeah, once I had some agency in my life, I could say, I don’t want to do this anymore. I stopped doing it, and that’s why I took such a long, long break, because I didn’t want to. And then I get into my late teens, my early twenties, and I go, what do I want with my life? I got to figure something out. I mean, I didn’t have to do anything. I’d made enough cash. I’m good. So, what do I want to do? I could do whatever, could become an engineer, an accountant. I could do all kinds of things. Nothing would be beneath me or anything like that. What do I want do? And I came back around to actually, I think I’m supposed to do this. I think, how blessed someone could be to find a calling, one that finds that person as opposed to the other way around. A lot of people want to do things. I would love to be playing in the NBA right now. People want shit all the time.

DEADLINE: But on the basketball court, elements like height, and gravity, make it impossible.

CULKIN: Exactly. When I was acting, just doing that, I was good at it. I got praise for it. So it also got me out of the house a lot, too, which I liked. I liked kind of being away from some of the old neighborhood. It swallowed people up. I liked being good at something and I knew I was good at this. Based on the praise I received.  

DEADLINE: Did that realization come around the time you played the wisecracking kid in Uncle Buck? You were so young.  

CULKIN: Yeah. Very early on, I could tell. I was doing stuff at the Ensemble Studio Theater, and I knew the audience was engaged by me. I’d say something that was supposed to get a laugh, and it got a laugh. So I knew I was doing something right. Also, it came naturally. It felt good, boom, and it kind of just kept going and going and going, and I got very fortunate. If I’d been a year older, a year younger, or the wrong color or gender, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me. You know what I mean? So there’s also circumstances, how those cards were dealt favored me. So I do wake up feeling fortunate, and I did enjoy it. It was a wild ride and all that stuff, but I knew I was good at it. Sometimes, you have to lose it to find it.

DEADLINE: Could you tamp down the natural inclination to be a kid? Leonardo DiCaprio once told me someone took him aside at the beginning of This Boy’s Life. Told him to watch Robert De Niro, how he conducted himself, how focused he was, compared to the clowning spirit young Leo brought to the set. It changed everything for him. You had John Hughes, a giant, and Chris Columbus, who’d become one. Did they allow you to improv lines, or was it like, here’s our cute little trained monkey and if he can say these lines, we’ll be okay?

CULKIN: That last thing you said, was a big part of it. I can’t remember which producer it was, but it was like, that’s the thing that they want the most out of a kid’s parents. I notice that kids don’t ask me, but parents always do. How do I get my kid to the business? And first thing I say is, don’t.

Honestly, what they look for the most in a kid is, they want the kid to remember his lines. That’s really what they want. I was always very good at that. That was easy, that was second nature. If I lost my place in the scene, I would just read the script. I literally had a photographic memory. So I was able to do those things, say my lines, find my mark, find my light, all that kind of stuff. Boom. That stuff was actually pretty easy for me. And so they were able to harness it, or I guess I was going to say, put a harness on it. If there’s a word for it, it would be harness. They were able to harness it, and take that energy that I had already, and also my natural skillset too. There wasn’t a ton of improv on Home Alone. I think Chris had a very specific vision.

If anything, he’d give me line reads, more than anything else. John was a little more loose with that. He wanted me to goof off and so I goofed off. But also, it was a different character [in Uncle Buck]. He was supposed to be kind of a zany kid, the kind of kid that would put a pot on his head and walk into a wall, and you’d think it was funny. In regard to Chris, he had a performance that he wanted out me, and that’s how he tailored his direction towards me.

DEADLINE: But some of those things that you did, for instance, with the aftershave?

CULKIN: Yeah, that was me. Sometimes, I just did it. I didn’t think, oh, I’m doing improv. I would just do it. I was a big fan of Looney Tunes. That’s how I cut some of my teeth when I was younger. Watching that, I thought that stuff was funny. And that’s the whole thing. It’s like when the coyote would follow the road runner off the cliff, and he’d stand there in mid-air for a second and then fall down. It’s that. That was, the hands go to the cheeks and stuff like that. That’s Looney Tunes. I had good instincts and I didn’t know any better. I just did what felt right.  

Sometimes, he’d be surgical about the line reads he wanted. But here was his trick. If you want to be a good director, if somebody does something good, you don’t tell ’em they do a good job. You just keep filming because then it’s called the Butter Trick. When I did Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, they did a thing about how, during the rehearsals at the Thanksgiving scene, when I asked for the butter, everyone laughed at the dress rehearsal. And then when we did it for real, it didn’t get a laugh anymore. Why not? And he goes, oh, because in the dress rehearsal, you asked for the butter. And when he actually did the take, you asked for the laugh. And if you say, hey, the way you walk is really funny, the next thing you know, the actor is only thinking about walking that way, and now it’s not funny anymore. You’re not asking for the butter anymore. That kind of thing. So when I was doing good, he kept on asking for the butter. I’m not going to tell you what you’re doing is good. Just keep asking for the butter. The butter trick.  

DEADLINE: So no, kid you’re fabulous, you’re gold, you’re money and don’t even know it.  

CULKIN: You wouldn’t do that with any creative person when it comes to that kind of stuff. Especially when it comes to performing. Again, if I see zucchini to you, what do you think of? I saw you trying to think of something else, but you think of zucchini. If I tell you, Hey, I like your accent, all you’re going to think about is your fricking accent.  

DEADLINE: Between the first and second films, you’d taken off like a rocket. That’s a lot to process for a 10-year old.

CULKIN: I came from Yorkville in Manhattan. It’s an Irish neighborhood and I was always the F word actor kid. Or the actor kid, depending on which friend circle we’re talking about. They knew I had a profession already. I was already doing movies, theater. I was even ballet dancing. I was already doing stuff over here besides going to Catholic school. So the immediate neighborhood, at least when it came to that kind of thing, it was a slow burn and then a spike. So it wasn’t altogether out of nowhere.  

For me, it was kind of just the way that it was. Now, I have perspective. I go, oh, that’s crazy. That’s unique. It’s one of a kind experience. But when I’m in the middle of it, I go like, no, this is what happens. Again, the hero’s journey. I do black box theater, then I book a couple commercials, then I do a small movie, then I get a bigger part in a small movie. Then I do a medium-sized movie, and then I got a big part in a big movie. And then it becomes a big, big thing. And then boom. That’s the hero’s journey. That’s the way it’s supposed to go. That’s the way it goes for everybody. Right? I didn’t have perspective. When you’re nine, 10 years old, you don’t know any of that stuff.

DEADLINE: Maybe better that way.

CULKIN: It wasn’t until later I started really realizing that shit’s actually really weird, yeah. I found myself yearning, yearning for something, normality, yearning for peers, because I was always a peerless person. I still kind of am in a certain regard. I’m a pretty purist, but also, you have to remember, almost everything that I did in my entire young career, I’m like the only kid. I’m always surrounded by adults, all the other actors and stuff like that. You look at the resume, there’s no Goonies or something like that where I am among a bunch of kids and we’re all going to go out there and having fun. It was always me, being the kid. So that was a big part of my yearning. I was like, I wanted to go to school, man. People would say, Hey, you’re 11 going on 40. And I was going, I’m 11. I want to go on 12. That’s really what I want. And that’s what I did. As soon as I walked away. That’s exactly what I did. I wanted to go to school, and that’s exactly what I did.

DEADLINE: What were the challenges of walking away, when you had parents who put their kids into acting?

CULKIN: When my parents were in the middle of their separations, it was then when I was, like, boom. Raised my hand and was just like, Hey, I’m done. Done. I’m done. I’m good. I hope you all made your money. No more coming from me. I’m going to school. That’s that. I put my foot down at that point. And when Kit was gone, it made it a lot easier for me to be able to say that. It was already enough of a mess at that point. Kit had already made his name Mud at that point. So it was kind of great. Just wonderful. There’s not a lot of people knocking on my door anyway right now. So I was like, wonderful. I just want to go to school. I want to hang out with people my own age, and that’s exactly what I did.  

DEADLINE: You had a couple movies with kids in the cast. The Good Son with Elijah Wood, Anna Chlumsky in My Girl. Fast friends?  

CULKIN: Yes and no. It’s funny because we were kind of different, actually, both me and Anna, and with Eli. We were a little different. I was a little more…streetwise would be the wrong term…but I wasn’t a theater kid, I was the wisecracker who’d cut my teeth in that kind of place. A lot of those actors were tugging on their mommy and daddy’s sleeve going, I want to be an actor. I want to be in movies. I wasn’t that kid. I was just good at it. I kept on just, I did it, and then I just kept on booking. That was that kind of thing. They had a little more of that kind of earnestness to them. Whereas me, I had a relaxedness to me that I was kind of like, you just go boom, boom, boom. Whereas they were a little more calculated. Anna and I, we, she drove me crazy a little bit, and this is on a personal level, a a petty 10-year-old thing. We had to share a trailer when it came to schooling, and she drank a lot of milk. And we shot that thing in Orlando, Florida, in the summer. And every time before we went to set, she’d pour milk down the drain, and the whole trailer would smell of sour milk, all the time. And that drove me fu*king crazy. And for a 10-year-old, that’s a big deal. Now, you’ brush it off but back then, I’m like, could she just stop pouring her milk down the drain? I’ve asked you a million times.  

DEADLINE: Adult stars throw tantrums over less.

CULKIN: This wasn’t even a tantrum, just more of that quiet seething. I asked you, I already asked you again. My experience was very different from theirs too. Even though we were in the same line of work, we were different animals. It’s the hooves thing. There’s all kinds of things with hoofs, antelope and gazelle and deer and moose and horses and zebras. Just because they all have them doesn’t mean they’re the same. I was a different kind of hooved animal.

DEADINE: It’s easy to imagine that when you told your father you were done, his response might be, ‘Kieran, come over here.’ What you’re your challenges in trying to become a normal kid, without the social grounding the other kids had?  

CULKIN: I was definitely the baby tomato…playing ketchup with my peers. I didn’t have the actual or emotional vocabulary to deal with certain kind of situations, because kids used to try to fu*k with me. That’s the thing. They used to fuck with me. They’re like, oh, they’d be one kid on their own, they’d mark out on me, let’s rag on this kid. Those waters were choppy, but I learned that I was in charge of the social contract. I was in charge of the interactions. If I wanted them to end, I could make them end. I learned a bunch of tricks over the years. Okay, let’s say somebody’s talking to me and it becomes clear they want something from me that I don’t want to give. I can see where this is headed. I just go, Hey, nice to meet you. And then start walking away before they even realize, the interaction’s already over with. I could just end the social contact. Those tools became helpful in getting me through. Now that I’m older, it’s easier for me to kind of diffuse things, but generally, I don’t even have to diffuse things anymore. I still get some people that are overly excited. They’re overly excited. The thing is that they used to be 10-year olds, but now they’re 45. They’ll see me, and all of a sudden, the 10-year-old then comes out and it’s like, oh my God. Then they get that 10-year-old excitement. And there’s certain times I’m like, okay, slow down cowboy. Just pump the brakes a little bit. Your energy level’s up here and I’m here. Or hey, I’m with my kids, or that kind of stuff. But at the same time, again, I now have that emotional vocabulary to speak that way to dismantle that. Also, I have a firmer hand with myself and with others and can say, I’m done with that, or What you’re doing is inappropriate. A lot of it is about the feeling of safety. You got to feel safe. You start feeling safe is Yeah, because what is it? There’s four things that kids feel: happy, mad, sad, or afraid.

Those are the base elements of any person, really. Or when it comes to kids, when you boil it down, it’s about safety, and anything else means danger. You have to start figuring that stuff out. What makes me this? What makes me feel safe? What makes me feel happy? Everything else is either making me mad, sad or scared. So I try to make sure I feel safe when I’m having these social interactions. And so again, I set up rules for myself. Don’t follow me to the bathroom. I hate that. Don’t do that. Don’t do that stuff in front of my kids. Just don’t do that.

I’ll tell them, this is inappropriate. Do you know where we are? There’s ways to do this. I don’t like being touched, handled. People will try to handle me. I don’t like being handled. Things like that. I’ll let them know like, Hey, whoa. Because some people don’t realize it. They don’t see it of course, in their head. They go, oh, in their head, they’re like, if I ever meet that person, I’m going to be super cool. We’re going to be best friends. And then all of a sudden it happens and they get caught up and next thing they’re like, Hey, take a selfie with me. It’s like, okay, easy. Would you do that to any stranger? I know you’re getting caught up in the moment. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time, I have rules.

DEADLINE: Feels like a healthy way to navigate fame. How long did it take you to draw rigid lines that you were not going to allow people to cross?  

CULKIN: It took a while. It wasn’t overnight, and it wasn’t even just a decade. Probably a couple decades. But it’s for my own sanity. Like I said, I’m in charge of the social contract. These are my rules. This is me. I am in charge of this.

DEADLINE: Many 45 year olds are hitting career and personal stride. Your growth curve was so different. Was there ever a time in your life where you said, you know what? I wish that earlier stuff never happened. I wish I regret the baggage that having had that early thing has placed on me, that’s making my life such a challenge.

CULKIN: Maybe in my late teens. But it didn’t live rent free in my mind or anything like that. I would let those in bad moments. I let that feeling sink in or set in for a second. But no, I like my life. There’s one me in this whole wide world. We’re all told we’re delicate snowflakes. We’re all different. I know I’m different. And I like that about me, and I know that my life is unique to me. It’s cool, to actually know that and know that about myself. I like that. I like being unique. I like being hooved animals, I like being a unicorn.  

DEADLINE: You broke with your father, who went from your protector to maybe someone intoxicated with the power your stardom gave him. From what I’d hear from people in Hollywood, it was Macaulay is a sweet kid, but we just can’t stand his father anymore.  

CULKIN: That sounds about right.

DEADLINE: Have you and your father ever come to a reckoning on all this?

CULKIN: He had seven beautiful kids and now he’s got five beautiful grandkids. None of them want anything to do with him. Nothing. As far as I know. Listen, if my siblings want to have their relationship with him, they can. Whatever. I have these beautiful kids at home, and I don’t want his sins being washed on my kids.

That’s not the way that I do business, and that’s why he needed to go over…there. And he’s going to sit there and he’s going to probably die alone and I’m going to go like, yeah, that’s what you deserve. I don’t need to say my piece to him. He knows that. He knows the things that he did. Or maybe he doesn’t, because the trick with him is that when he did something…I remember, it must have been over 30 years ago, he did something. He yelled at me, or something like that, in front of my friend. I didn’t like that, but whatever, I got to suck it up. That kind of thing. I took my lumps. I took my lumps.

And then it was a while later, and he was asking why I was being so cold to him. I said, it was because of that. It was because you embarrassed me in front of my friend. He’s like, that didn’t happen. No, it did. It left a mark on me. No, that didn’t happen. Really. And you know what it was? It wasn’t denial. He actually did the mental gymnastics, to get rid of that, like things never happened. This is who I’m dealing with. I can bring him into a therapist and we can talk about it for the next 50 years, but there are certain things he’s just going to wash away. This is who I’m talking to. This is who I’m dealing with. No, you go live in the over-there. I live in the over-here. And you get to live in the over-there.

DEADLINE: How much of his behavior projected onto you? If the town wants to see you win, you’re going to win, and it sounds like he could have turned the town against you.

CULKIN: For sure. His stink didn’t get too much on me, to be honest. I think people knew when he was doing his power grab, it was him. Do you really think over there at 20th century Fox that I’m there going, yeah, when he says, I’m going to pull him from Home Alone 2? Do you think they really thought that? No, no. People are smart. They’re smart enough to know that I was 10, 11, 12 years old [when these things happened]. I’m not pulling those kind of strings. And also they would know just by meeting me. At first blush, it’s like, he was just a kid, a talented kid who had way too much energy and my parents didn’t know what to do with me. That’s how I ended up in this line of work to begin with. I was always unafraid, just this fearless kid who was naturally funny and all that kind of stuff.

But no, his stink didn’t get too much on me. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had to bump into a couple people who he did burn over the years, but they didn’t blame me. They even specifically say, I don’t blame you, but by the way, I was the original director on the Good Son…I would apologize say like, Hey, sorry about that. And first thing out of their mouth is…we know it wasn’t you. You were just a kid. I did the good work, and I was always pleasant. I never pulled the diva card, ever. I just knew how to do the job. I knew how to do the craft before I even knew of it as a craft.

DEADLINE: You were just born to it?  

CULKIN: Like a fish to water.

DEADLINE: Fair to say you broke a lot of cycles, with your own children?  

CULKIN: Listen, I love my kids endlessly. I give them everything. There was a certain word that really couldn’t get thrown around in my house that I throw around like a gunslinger. Proud. I never really got a lot of Attaboys. My kid was doing his recital, was supposed to play the bug who has to go get the egg. He was so excited. The curtain opens, and he freezes. He runs off stage, crying. I got up from my seat, ran all the way to the back. The first thing I said was, I’m so proud of you. You got up there, in the first place. That’s amazing, dude. Man, you must have been so scared. But you did it anyway. And there was so many people there too. Everyone saw it was great.

That’s what I give. I give them that. I’m proud of you no matter what. That’s the trick, for me. Unconditional acceptance. You don’t have to be the bug that ends up with the egg. You don’t have to do that. Don’t worry about it.

DEADLINE: A documentary just came out on John Candy, and you spend a lot of screen time discussing him. He had great moments in Uncle Buck and Home Alone, and with Hughes in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

CULKIN: He was very sweet. It’s the opposite of the Fatty Arbuckle thing with kids and animals. He had a fatherly kind of vibe and when he would ask me how I was doing, he actually was asking how I was doing. He always took care of me. I really wish…he could have been around to see my kids.

DEADLINE: Maybe there is no higher compliment than that.