Why Did Macaulay Culkin Cut Off His Parents?

Macaulay Culkin took a huge step when he cut his parents out of his life, but not everyone thought it was a good thing. His father has become notoriously hard to track down, but when reporters finally found him and asked about his son, his cruel response was chilling. You guys give up or you are thirsty for more? Macaulay Culkin is a bundle of contradictions. He was raised poor in America’s most expensive city. On film he was left home alone, but in real life he was crowded with his six siblings in a tiny apartment. He was the highest paid child movie star, yet he received seven nominations for worst actor of the year. His best friend was an alleged predator, but Culkin claims he wasn’t harmed. Growing up, Macaulay lived with his family in New York City, but they weren’t exactly taking a bite of the Big Apple. The surroundings were posh, but money was extremely tight. As the third child, Culkin remembers a succession of babies arriving and the family’s one-bedroom apartment growing smaller and smaller. With an eventual seven kids, the small home was quickly becoming a pressure cooker.

Culkin’s father, Kit, ran things like the captain of a ship. He terrorized his children. When he didn’t get his way, he used humiliation and even physical assault to keep the family in line. Macaulay started working at the age of four, appearing on stage with the New York Philharmonic and in the made-for-TV movie The Midnight Hour. In 1988, he made the move to the big screen. He was just 8 years old when he appeared in the star-studded Rocket Gibraltar. His last film of the eighties was the comedy Uncle Buck with John Candy. I’m your Uncle Buck. Do I have an uncle? I took a shower washing everybody part with actual soap. No one at the time knew what a huge hit Home Alone would be. So, Culkin’s salary was set at just one hundred thousand dollars. His first paycheck couldn’t come fast enough. Even though he was starring in a multimillion-dollar movie, he was still poor. The casting director on Home Alone said that he had to pay out of his own pocket to get Macaulay to and from rehearsal. He also said that he often found him on his hands and knees looking for spare change.

Home Alone went on to take almost five hundred million dollars at the box office, the highest for a live-action comedy at the time. Culkin, at just 10 years of age, received a nomination for a Golden Globe. He was suddenly one of the biggest stars on the planet. After Home Alone, he dove right back into work. He starred in Wish Kid, a Saturday morning show for kids, and around the same time he hosted Saturday Night Live. Live from New York, it’s Saturday night. In 1992, he was all set to reprise his role of Kevin in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Obviously, there could be no Home Alone sequel without him, and Macaulay’s dad knew it. The offer for Culkin to appear in the sequel was an incredible five million dollars. Kit said his son would do it on one condition, that Macaulay and his sister Quinn got roles in the upcoming movie The Good Son. The studio reluctantly agreed, but Kit wasn’t making any friends with these kinds of tactics. Culkin did appear in both films and made a cool five million dollars for each.

Following the lukewarm reviews of The Good Son, it seemed that audiences weren’t that comfortable with a Macaulay Culkin that wasn’t quite as adorable as Kevin McCallister. He appeared in the duds Getting Even with Dad and Richie Rich, receiving eight million dollars apiece, setting a record for the highest salary ever paid to a child actor. Kit believed that his son’s fame had a shelf life, which made him push Macaulay to work even harder. He’d been working pretty much non-stop since he was four, and he was exhausted. He had enough of being a celebrity and just wanted some normalcy. His parents had never been married, and now they were ready to call time on their relationship. It could have been an easy separation except for one thing. Their son had made them a fortune, and they needed to split it up. But how much was Macaulay actually worth? Apparently, his dad was purposefully keeping him in the dark about his net worth by hiding newspapers from him. When his parents’ separation went public, Macaulay found out the startling truth. He was worth over fifteen million dollars.

Culkin realized that nothing good would come from his father getting access to his fortune. He had nothing against his mother, but he decided to file a suit to be free of both of them. Many reports said that Culkin was suing for emancipation, but that wasn’t correct. He simply wanted to remove them as controllers of his trust fund. At 16 years of age, Culkin walked away with the fortune he’d worked so hard to amass, cutting off his father completely. He then took a well-deserved break from movies and did something normal, attended high school. He married fellow actor Rachel Miner at the age of 18, but split from her just two years later. In 2000, just 10 years after Home Alone had made him a household name, Culkin appeared on stage in London. In 2003, he landed a guest spot on the wildly popular sitcom Will and Grace. It seemed that he was waiting for a film role that would define him as something very different from Kevin McCallister. That film was 2003’s Party Monster, where he played a club kid who ends up with addiction problems and in prison for murder.

The film got a big meh from audiences, but Roger Ebert called Culkin’s performance fearless. What Culkin learned from Party Monster was that he could play darker characters, which led him to 2004’s Saved. This satirical comedy saw him playing a wheelchair-bound student at a Christian high school. Macaulay had a serious wild side. He confessed to New York magazine that there was a point in his life when he was doing the New York bar scene and flirting with every waitress. He then did yet another 180 and decided he’d had enough and became celibate. And that’s when fate pitched him a curveball. He met and fell for the beautiful Mila Kunis. The two started dating in 2002, but by 2006, the couple were living in separate cities and the relationship was no longer working. They eventually split in 2011. But Culkin was having more serious problems than just girl trouble. In September 2004, he was in Oklahoma sitting in the passenger seat of his friend’s car. His friend was speeding and driving recklessly. Officers pulled the pair over and decided to search the vehicle.

When officers asked Culkin what was in a black bag on the floor, he had an odd reply. He said the bag contained three thousand dollars, but that wasn’t true. Once the cannabis was out of the bag, Culkin dug into his pocket and produced something more. Eight Xanax and sixteen sedatives. Of course, all of this was illegal and Culkin and his friend soon found themselves locked up in a cell. Culkin eventually paid four thousand dollars bail and received three one-year suspended sentences. After this brush with the law, he lasted a year before heading to court again. This time to help an old friend. Back in 1990, Culkin became friends with another star who’d also made it big as a child, Michael Jackson. So, what would these two with an age difference of twenty-two years have in common? At the time, Culkin had nothing to talk about with his peers. He was taking in up to eight million dollars a film while his classmates were mowing lawns for ten bucks. Jackson, who’d also been pushed by a domineering father, knew what Culkin was going through.

When allegations against Jackson led to a 2005 charge, suddenly Culkin’s friendship with Jackson was under the microscope. When the trial began, most people thought that Culkin would appear as one of Jackson’s alleged victims. Instead, he did something surprising. He stood up as a character witness. What Culkin said about Jackson boiled down to two things. I never saw anything. He never did anything. Some believe Culkin isn’t telling the truth, but he stuck to his story over the years. Macaulay has a clear sense of humor about his career and isn’t above making jokes about his most famous character. While this return of Kevin McCallister seemed just for laughs, his next one seemed just for cash. A few years later, Culkin found himself playing Kevin once again, this time in an ad for Google Assistant. He reprised some of the iconic scenes from Home Alone. Grown up Culkin looked pretty silly jumping on the bed, but with Google Assistant, at least he had something to remind him about what to do next. It turned out there was still an audience for Culkin as Kevin and the ad quickly went viral.

In 2013, Culkin started a band called The Pizza Underground, a comedic parody group that played Velvet Underground covers, except all the lyrics had references to pizza. While this cheesy gag went over fairly well in America, things went sour once the band crossed the pond. When they took the stage at Rock City in Nottingham, England, they faced something they probably hadn’t anticipated, true Velvet Underground fans. The audience thought that Culkin and company were making a mockery of their favorite band and began to boo them. The boos quickly became flung pints of ale. After just 15 minutes, The Pizza Underground left the stage. Culkin canceled the rest of the UK tour and the band soon split up. In 2014, a photo surfaced of Ryan Gosling wearing a vintage T-shirt with Macaulay Culkin’s face on it. Culkin saw the picture and wanted to have some fun. So, he had a special T-shirt of his own made. On his shirt, there was a picture of Ryan Gosling wearing the T-shirt with Macaulay Culkin on it. It looks like Culkin was a little starved for attention and he didn’t stop there.

He was looking at his passport one day and realized he didn’t like his middle name, Carson. Instead of just changing it to something else, he had an idea for a little publicity. He offered to change his name based on an online poll. The losing choices were as follows: The McRib is back, Shark Week, and Kieran, thought up by his brother Kieran. Culkin’s fourth and winning middle name choice was Macaulay, meaning his name is now Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin. He appeared in Changeland, a 2019 comedy-drama written and directed by Robot Chicken’s Seth Green. Don’t you miss your life? How can I miss a life when I’m busy living it? This film, shot in Thailand, flew under most people’s radar, but one good thing came out of it for Macaulay. While they were filming, he met co-star Brenda Song and it was love at first sight. They eventually had a son who they named Dakota after Culkin’s sister who died in a traffic accident. As a child actor, Culkin received his share of awards and nominations. He was even nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor in a motion picture, musical, or comedy up against big stars like Richard Gere and Patrick Swayze.

At the age of 12, he won MTV’s Best Kiss Award for smooching Anna Chlumsky in My Girl. On the other hand, he’s also been nominated seven times for the Razzie Award for worst actor. Luckily, he’s never won that dubious award. In 2020, Culkin joined the cast of American Horror Story. Apparently, he got the part over the phone with creator Ryan Murphy. Murphy mentioned that Culkin’s character gets crazy and intimate with Kathy Bates, already famous for playing crazy in 1990’s Misery. There are 32 years between the two actors, but Culkin’s answer to Murphy was, This sounds like the role I was born to play. Which makes one wonder what Culkin’s dad would have said about a role like this if he still ran his son’s career. Kit Culkin wasn’t the easiest person to track down. The man who had brought Macaulay Culkin to superstardom and super wealth was living in Oregon. In 2016, a reporter for the Daily Mail found him and asked about Macaulay. Kit’s reply was chilling. I don’t consider him a son anymore. Sometimes I wonder if How did that While Macaulay Culkin is clearly no longer Home Alone, he’s certainly a long way away from reconciling with his father. Thanks for watching. If you love movies, television, and entertainment, make sure to subscribe to stay in the know, and check out the videos on screen for more must-watch picks.