How Macaulay Culkin Managed to Oust His Bossy Father From His Life, Beat Depression, and Become a Fan Favorite Again

For many people, Home Alone is strongly associated with the Christmas holidays. Yes, we love watching the smart boy, portrayed by Macaulay Culkin, trick the bad guys over and over again. But the life of the actor himself wasn’t as happy as the film’s story — the role of Kevin made him popular but it also brought him lots of trouble.

This Bright Side article is going to tell you how Macaulay managed to beat his depression and addiction and live a full life again.

Childhood and first roles

Macaulay Culkin with his father

• Macaulay’s career didn’t start with Home Alone. Actually, the role of Kevin wasn’t even his first main role: the first main role he had was in Uncle Buck when he was only 8 years old.
• His father used to be a Broadway actor but when his children were born, he stepped down. When Macaulay was a baby, his family was really poor.
• The role of Kevin was almost given to a different boy. If he had gotten it, Kevin would have had dark hair (John Mulaney was asked to audition), and Macaulay’s life would have been much different. But thanks to his experience in Uncle Buck, Culkin was given the part.

• The first Home Alone movie got Macaulay the Best Young Actor Starring in a Motion Picture award and he earned $110,000. Just to compare: for the sequel, he earned $4.5 million.
• Of course, this wasn’t easy for Macaulay. He said that he just wanted to rest. In his parents’ apartment, he didn’t even have his own bed, let alone his own room.

Macaulay during one of his many interviews

• Culkin was one of the most famous children in the world — he was in the second position on the list of the 100 Greatest Kid Stars.
• His father was really bossy. His mother stayed at home with the other kids and his father went to the shoots with Macaulay. He totally controlled the career of this young star. During the process, Macaulay says, his father wouldn’t let him sleep and made him practice his lines.

Macaulay Culkin is 13 years old here. This is one of his last roles playing a kid in Getting Even With Dad.

• In 1994, Macaulay Culkin did his last film and then he stopped working in the movie industry. He was going to continue studying at school since, before, he had to stop studying because he was working. By that time, he had appeared in 15 movies in just 7 years — not even adult actors can handle this much work. And the movies released after Home Alone were really heavily criticized, especially The Good Son.

• Soon after Macaulay stopped acting, his parents broke up and started suing each other over custody. He decided to take his parents’ names off his trust fund and find an executor that would make sure the 2 of them wouldn’t take any of his money.
• Before coming of age, Macaulay didn’t even know how much money he had earned. His parents made sure he didn’t know all the details of his contracts. Macaulay says, “When I turned 18, I sat down in my accountant’s office, it was basically the day where he put down a piece of paper in front of me and said this is how much you’re worth. It was interesting because it was one of these moments where it was like, I felt like this little boy had worked really hard and I inherited all of his money. I felt like I inherited this money in some odd way.”

Macaulay with his first wife Rachel Miner

• Macaulay first married in 1998. He and his wife were 18 years old. Rachel Miner was also an actress. The marriage didn’t last long and in 2000, they broke up. 2 years later, they got an official divorce.
• In 2002, Macaulay started dating Mila Kunis. Their relationship lasted for 8 years, and they didn’t really make it public. Mila later said that it was really hard to keep their relationship a secret because Macaulay’s fans were really amazed when they saw him with a girl on the street. The break-up was hard for both of them.

• In 2000, Macaulay tried to return to his acting career by appearing in a play and several movies in supporting roles. Some of his work got good reviews but despite his talent, none of his work was as popular as Home Alone. From 2000 to 2019, he only appeared in 6 movies.
• In the middle of the 2000s, he had trouble with the law but got away with a fine and a suspended sentence. In 2000, his half-sister died and several years later, his sister also passed away.

The left photo was taken at the police station when the actor was 24. The right photo was taken around 6 months later.

• The actor still doesn’t like giving interviews or discussing any aspects of his personal life. It’s understandable: he had enough of it back when he was a kid. He tries to focus on the present and sometimes talks about the good things in his life.
• In 2013, he started a parody rock band called The Pizza Underground but his music career wasn’t very successful — during one of his shows, the audience was really disappointed.
• In 2018, the actor appeared in a Google Assistant commercial where he repeated his role from Home Alone along with some iconic scenes. The commercial went viral and has almost 5 million views on YouTube.

• Even though the actor doesn’t talk about his life today, it’s quite obvious that he’s doing fine now. He currently lives with his girlfriend Brenda Song. They have cats, they wear identical pajamas, and they had a son in 2021.
• “People don’t realize how incredibly kind and loyal and sweet and smart he is,” Brenda says. “Truly what makes Mack so special is that he is so unapologetically Mack. He knows who he is, and he’s 100 percent okay with that. He’s worked really hard to be the person he is.”
• In 2021, Macaulay took part in American Horror Story. He plays one of the main roles in season 10 and his work has gotten a lot of very good reviews.

Macaulay in American Horror Story

• In recent years, Macaulay hasn’t been in the spotlight all that much. But he made a splash when he appeared in a Gucci show. He looks great at the age of 41 and he finally feels great.
• “Yeah, I’m a homebody,” he says. “It’s where these 2 former child stars, one still working as much as she can, the other not so sure, just want to be. With each other, doing whatever.”

We are happy for Macaulay. He seems absolutely happy now. We think he deserves some quiet family happiness, just like everyone else.

Do you like Macaulay Culkin? Have you seen any other movies with him except Home Alone?

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