3 Lessons From the Child-Star Saga of Macaulay Culkin
The ‘Home Alone’ scream (Warner Bros.)
Twenty-five years ago, on Nov. 16, 1990, Home Alone opened, and Macaulay Culkin was transformed. The 10-year-old child actor who’d worked alongside John Candy (Uncle Buck) and Burt Lancaster (Rocket Gibraltar) was suddenly a child star, the most influential child star of the movies since Shirley Temple, and the highest-paid of any era to that time. Culkin’s two follow-up movies, My Girl and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, made money, too, and the youngster’s ever-increasing salary quote made headlines.
Then, four years after the ride started, it was over.
Culkin stepped off the fame train at age 14 never to return to its high-speed rails, even as he continued to occasionally act and perform.
Culkin promoted 'Robot Chicken’ at New York Comic Con 2015 (Getty Images; inset Everett Collection)
At 35, Culkin isn’t the child-star success that we routinely celebrate — the A-lister who prevailed over adolescence and Hollywood, the Jodie Foster, the Ron Howard, the Drew Barrymore. But neither is he the classic child-star cautionary tale — the fallen, tragic figure who lived too fast, too hard.
Culkin is something else, and his story is worth examining for what it tells us about child stars, fame, and how you handle what comes next.
Macaulay and his little brother Kieran posed with their parents Kit Culkin and Patricia Brentrup (Getty Images)
1. Maybe don’t have your father as your manager. This alternately could read, don’t have your mother as your manager. Or, don’t have your uncle as your manager. Or, don’t employ anyone to manage your career whom you can’t fire without blowing up your family.
Culkin’s father, Kit Culkin, is ground zero of his son’s boom and bust career. He was there when Home Alone burst out as the top-grossing movie of 1990, he was there as his eldest child booked top-flight role after role, and he was there as his boy drew a reputation as a bad seed, on films such as The Good Son, because of his own reputedly heavy-handed negotiating tactics.
When it works, when a child’s loved one’s attention to the details and the financials of a career nets the youth the spoils of a Kris Jenner offspring, then all is good. When it doesn’t work, and it didn’t work with the Culkins — Macaulay and Kit Culkin reportedly have been estranged for 20 years now — it’s profoundly wrong.
'Richie Rich’ (Twentieth Century Fox)
2. It’s OK to quit. It could be said that by 1994, and after disappointing returns from Getting Even With Dad, The Pagemaster, and Richie Rich, Hollywood quit Culkin and not the other way around, but the movie industry never quits anybody cold. (Witness Shia LaBeouf’s career, which continues even if LaBeouf’s days of headlining blockbusters are over.) It was very much Culkin who quit Hollywood. He didn’t want to make any more movies, and so he didn’t. It would be nearly a decade before Culkin went back before the cameras, for the indie Party Monster and a stray episode of Will & Grace. Quitting is not a sexy thing to do — it seems like something quitters do, after all, but it was a necessary thing for Culkin.
“How else are you going to act like a human being if you’ve never had a chance to be one?” Culkin asked in 2004.
3. Fly low, avoid radar. Through the years, there nearly has been as much tabloid fodder in Culkin’s life as a Lindsay Lohan’s or a Justin Bieber’s.
There was the marriage at 17, to fellow child actor Rachel Miner. There was the divorce at 19.
Rachel and Macaulay (Getty Images)
There was the long-term relationship with a rising star, Mila Kunis.
Mila and Macaulay (WireImage)
There was the courtroom testimony that intimated Michael Jackson had molested his underage “Black Or White” music video co-star.
‘Black Or White’ (YouTube)
There was the 2012 paparazzi photo, showing Culkin walking in New York City, that caused the media to label the former star “gaunt,” and spurred whispers about his health.
Culkin in February 2012 (INF)
Through it all, Culkin has largely kept his own counsel. There have been a handful of interviews, including denials of his being victimized by Jackson, but only a handful. He hasn’t played to the cameras. He hasn’t fanned the flames. When Culkin quit Hollywood, he quit being a public figure, too. It’s not fashionable — indeed, it’s nearly unheard of — but it’s an admirable way to recede from the spotlight. It’s also a manageable way.
Culkin showed off his artsy side to Bullett Magazine in December 2012 (Bullett Magazine/Facebook)
Today, Culkin is only marginally a TMZ figure; the celebrity press has more willing participants to cover, and Culkin presumably has other things to do.
So, 25 years after Home Alone, Culkin isn’t a movie star. So, he plays kazoo for a band called the Pizza Underground. Is this tragedy? This is life, his life, the one he gets to live like no one is watching.
Because perhaps no one is.
