Macaulay Culkin shot to fame in the Home Alone – voted by Pubity fans as the greatest Christmas film – but how much do you know about the actor?
With Christmas now less than a month away – get writing those Christmas lists people! – people are looking to those seasonal movies to help get into the spirit of the season.
One movie that people come back to year after year is the 1990 classic Home Alone. Indeed, Pubity fans recently voted it the best Christmas movie of all time.
The star of that movie is Macaulay Culkin, who was just 10 when he played Kevin McCallister, the boy who is accidentally left home alone when the rest of his family jet off to France and then has to repel a couple of burglars looking to raid the family home. His cheek and charisma in the role charmed millions and shot him to worldwide fame.
But what has happened to him in the 35 years since? How much do you know about Macaulay Culkin? Here are some facts you might not know.
He comes from an acting family
Macaulay isn’t the only actor in his family. His siblings include Kieran, who has had success in films such as Scott Pilgrim vs The World and TV shows such as Succession, and Rory, who has appeared in movies such as Scream 4 and TV shows such as Waco.
His aunt is Bonnie Bedelia, who is known recently for playing Camille Braverman in Parenthood from 2010-15.
He quit acting to go to school
As well as Home Alone, Macaulay starred in a string of hit movies in the early to md-1990s, including My Girl, Home Alone 2, The Pagemaster and Richie Rich, earning millions of dollars in the process.
However, by 1994, Macaulay was growing tired of the acting business and fame and quit after filming Richie Rich. Deciding he wanted a ‘normal life’ he went to a private high school in Manhattan.
He didn’t divorce his parents
There is a common myth that Macaulay divorced his parents, but this isn’t true. However, during his teens he did take them to court to remove their name from his trust fund and hired an executor instead. He is believed to have a good relationship with his mother, although he hasn’t had contact with his father in 30 years.
He has one of the most liked tweets of all time
Back in August 2020, on his 40th birthday, on Twitter (as it was then, and what it is still called by most people) Macaulay tweeted out the joke: “Hey guys, wanna feel old? I’m 40. You’re welcome.”
The tweet – playing on how in some people’s minds he is still that 10-year-old kid – went hugely viral and ended up getting more than 2.8 million likes and was the fourth most-liked tweet of the year. At the time, that put it as number 9 most-like tweet of all time. More than five years later, it is still the 22nd most liked tweet of all time.
He was in a rock band
In 2013, Macaulay went viral on YouTube with a video of him eating a cheese pizza. The video, a parody of Andy Warhol eating a burger in the documentary 66 Scenes from America, was to promote his new band, the comedy rock band the Pizza Underground – who mostly made pizza-based parodies of tracks by the Velvet Underground.
The band subsequently toured the US and the UK – including Macaulay storming off stage when a kazoo solo was booed and the crowd started throwing cups of beer at the stage – and released some tracks before splitting in 2016.
He changed his name – sort of
Back in December 2018, Macaulay announced that he was going to legally change his name – well, his middle name at least.
His middle name was Carson, but he decided to change it and held a poll on his website asking fans to choose what his new name should be. There were five options and the voting public, always reliable in these sorts of things, plumped for ‘Macaulay Culkin’. So that meant his name was now Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin.
Apparently, Macaulay went through with this too – announcing in April 2019 that the legal process had been completed.
