Macaulay Culkin And His Controversial Father Figures
The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty ImagesIn the wake of the massive hit film that made him a child star, Macaulay Culkin has had to navigate a life outside the spotlight that once followed him endlessly in the 1990s.
No child actor encapsulates the 1990s quite as well as Macaulay Culkin.
Known for his bright blonde hair and cheeky smirk, Culkin became a household name after the now-iconic Christmastime staple Home Alone. Though his star power increased quickly, his personal life was plagued by a rocky relationship with his father, legal emancipation at age 14, and a friendship with Michael Jackson that has left many with questions, doubts, and concerns.
Born in August of 1980 in New York City to former Broadway actor Christopher “Kit” Culkin and Patricia Brentrup, Macaulay Culkin was one of seven children, many of whom have also had careers of varying success in the entertainment industry.
Culkin landed his first acting role at age four in a stage production of Beach Babies at the New York Philharmonic.
After minor roles in some television programs throughout the latter half of the 1980s, Culkin’s first jump to the big screen was in 1988’s The Rocket Gibraltar followed by 1989’s See You in the Morning and then the John Candy classic Uncle Buck.
But it wasn’t until 1990’s Home Alone that Culkin had his major breakthrough — becoming the biggest child star in the world.
In the midst of his fame, Macaulay Culkin became a close friend of Michael Jackson’s, even starring in the King of Pop’s music video for the hit song Black or White. Culkin has long been part of the unsettling conversation that has surrounded Jackson for years regarding his inappropriate relationships with children.
Though Culkin testified during Jackson’s infamous 2005 trial that the King of Pop had never touched him inappropriately, he also confirmed that he did share a bed with Jackson more than 10 times. He added that the singer had an alarm on his bedroom door that would alert him if anyone were approaching or nearby.
“There was like a walkway kind of thing, where if somebody was approaching the door, it would kind of like ‘ding-dong, ding-dong,'” Culkin testified. “When anyone would approach the room, yeah, you’d hear this kind of soft kind of alarm, like ‘ding-dong’ kind of thing.”
Culkin also confirmed that he had traveled with Jackson on a vacation to Bermuda, spent a handful of evenings alone on Neverland Ranch, and had even been given a Rolex watch as a gift from the superstar.
Despite this odd set of circumstances, Culkin has mostly remained mum on the subject in recent years leaving the rest of the world to speculate, once again, on the secret life of Michael Jackson.
One of the biggest driving factors behind Culkin’s success was his management, run by none other than his own father. An actor himself whose career had cooled, the elder Culkin determined which films his son participated in, but behind the scenes, Kit Culkin was a tyrant.
In a revealing interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Macaulay Culkin claimed that his father was prone to threaten and humiliate his children. He even alleged that his father was jealous because “everything he tried to do in his life I excelled at before I was 10 years old.”
By the time Culkin was a teenager, his star status had begun to fade. With the failure of both The Good Son and Richie Rich, Culkin decided to officially take a hiatus from acting.
In 1995 when Culkin was just 15, he took his parents to court in the hopes of gaining total control over his $17 million earnings. The battle was arduous, bitter, and public, and ultimately ended with the child actor’s total emancipation. He received control of his money and estrangement from his father that still lasts to the present day.
To be sure, Macaulay has not been the only Culkin child to speak out against the patriarch. In an interview with Vanity Fair in December 2018, Macaulay’s brother Kieran commented about their father that:
“He’s not a good dude, but he wasn’t really a big part of my life after the age of 15. Sometime in the 90s, he went away and disappeared for two, three weeks, and the babysitter remarked to my mom, ‘You know what’s funny is their father’s been gone for three weeks, and not one of them has said, Hey, where’s Dad?’ Nobody cared, actually. My mom was the parent, so when he wasn’t there it was nicer and better.”
These days, Macaulay Culkin keeps a fairly low profile. He enjoys making music with his pizza-themed comedy-rock band called The Pizza Underground, and has even started his own comedy website called Bunny Ears in 2018.
Culkin may never achieve the level of super-stardom he saw at such a young age, but he is still remembered fondly by fans who grew up with his now-classic films and are happy he has emerged from the child-star machine relatively normal and relatively unscathed.
Perhaps it’s as simple as letting child actors be children first and stars second.
After this look at famous Hollywood child actors and where they are now, take a look at some of Hollywood’s biggest stars before they were famous. Then, check out these 23 famous people who you didn’t know had Autism.
