Retiring at 14, dodging pints of beer,
and hanging with a Moldy Peach. He's grown a lot since being one of the most famous child
actors of all time — here's what Macaulay Culkin has been through since "Home Alone."
The 1994 movie "Richie Rich" was Macaulay Culkin's last hurrah as a child star,
completed shortly before the effects of adolescence began
kicking in. As he explained during a 2004 appearance on "Larry King Live" -
"I did 14 movies in six years, which is more than two a year,
and just kind of pumping them out, and I was at this point where I really wanted
to take a break. […] I always joke, 'Yeah, I retired at 14.'"
After all those years of solid work, the actor felt he deserved a little time off
to enjoy the fruits of his labors. Culkin was 15 when his parents' broke up, and their messy
split allowed him the opportunity to extricate both of them from his finances. Speaking to
Esquire in 2020 about news reports from that time that he'd become an emancipated minor,
he explained the situation wasn't quite as it had been reported. He told the publication -
"I legally took my parents' names off of my trust fund and found an executor,
someone who would look over my finances, just in case anyone wanted to stick their f—ing pinkie
in the pie. But the next thing you know, the story was that I divorced my parents."
Macaulay Culkin was just 17-years-old when he married fellow actor Rachel Miner,
who was also 17, in 1998. Like Culkin, Miner had been a child actor, with credits including the
soap opera "Guiding Light," and playing the sister of Anne Frank in a Broadway
revival of "The Diary of Anne Frank." As Culkin told New York Magazine in 2001 -
"We dated four times before we got married. She'd broken up with me three times before,
and so the last time we were going out I said, 'Marry me now before you dump me again.'"
The marriage didn't last long, as the couple separated in 2000.
"I think we both need to take a step back. We're just figuring out where we are right now."
They never did reconcile, and finalized their divorce in 2002.
After taking a six year break, Macaulay Culkin felt the urge
to return to acting. Explaining his decision to BBC News, Culkin said -
"I asked myself if I wanted to get back into acting and thought:
'Yes but under my own terms and nothing like it was before.'"
While fans likely expected him to restart his movie career, Culkin made an unexpected left
turn by venturing into theater. His first acting gig after his lengthy hiatus was
a role in a 2000 production of "Madame Melville" in London's West End. Culkin,
then 20, earned excellent reviews for his performance as a 15-year-old student in Paris,
and the play was a success. The following year, the show made the jump over the pond,
with Culkin reprising his role when "Madame Melville" was mounted off-Broadway in New York.
During his 2004 chat with Larry King, Culkin said he was anxious to return to the stage, saying -
"I love theater. I'll do it in a heartbeat. […] It's my favorite form."
Following his stage debut in London, Macaulay Culkin then returned to movies. His first
project was far edgier fare than the films of his childhood: the 2003 indie film "Party
Monster," in which he portrayed real life NYC club kid and convicted killer Michael Alig.
Culkin followed that film with a role in "Saved!" In the 2004 satire of born-again Christianity,
Culkin played a wisecracking teenager in a wheelchair attending a faith-based
high school. "Party Monster" and "Saved!" demonstrated Culkin wasn't
interested in fulfilling people's expectations, telling Larry King -
"I have no control over people's perceptions of me at all. [...] All I can do,
especially when it comes to my career, is go out there and do cool unique kinds of things."
"We don't do - we just are!"
"But what about work?"
"Well it takes a lot of work to look THAT ridiculous!"
Just as Macaulay Culkin was re-establishing his acting career as an adult, an unfortunate
encounter with the law threatened to ruin everything. In September 2004,
Culkin was a passenger in a car pulled over for speeding outside Oklahoma City. According to CNN,
a police search of the vehicle discovered 17.3 grams of marijuana,
eight Xanax pills and 16 clonazepam pills; Culkin conceded he did not have a prescription
for those pills. He was then arrested and hit with two charges: possession of marijuana,
and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription. Culkin was later released after
meeting a $4,000 bail. He entered a guilty plea to both charges; he was sentenced to
two one-year sentences, both of which were deferred, in addition to being fined $540.
Years later, Culkin insisted that tabloid reports in the wake of his arrest,
claiming he'd become a drug addict, were wildly overblown. He told The Guardian in 2016 -
"I was not pounding six grand of heroin every month or whatever."
Following his arrest, Macaulay Culkin ventured into writing, authoring the experimental,
quasi -autobiographical novel "Junior" in 2006. Written in a sort of stream-of-consciousness
style, the book presented vignettes apparently lifted from Culkin's life,
focusing on his fraught relationship with his father. In an interview with New York
Magazine, Culkin was pragmatic about how he expected "Junior" to be received, saying -
"I'm not expecting the American literary community to welcome me
with open arms. To them I'm just some schmuck kid who wrote some book."
Culkin did, however, approach the book with seriousness, seeing it as a way for him to try to
come to terms with his fame and the complicated role that his father played in his life.
In 2009, Macaulay Culkin returned to the spotlight when he joined the cast of NBC's drama "Kings."
The series' concept was loosely inspired by the Old Testament story of King David. The
show earned solid reviews, but ultimately failed to attract an audience before it was canceled.
That same year, Culkin delved into the world of professional wrestling, his first of a
few forays into the world of WWE — and it almost turned into more than mere cameos. During a 2022
appearance on actor and wrestling fan Freddie Prinze Jr.'s "Wrestling with Freddie" podcast,
Culkin revealed there was a point when he was tempted to join the WWE as a writer, saying -
"There were times where I wanted to, like kind of just find six months of my life at the very least
just to kinda go in there and stuff. I will say I kind of regret not [writing for WWE]."
Among the stranger credits in Macaulay Culkin's IMDb profile is "The Wrong
Ferrari," a surrealistic 2011 movie that's most notable for being filmed
entirely with an iPhone. The film was the brainchild of Adam Green,
one half of the musical duo Moldy Peaches, who enlisted his famous friends to appear.
As Green told Vulture, he came up with the idea while playing around with his new iPhone during
a Moldy Peaches tour of Europe. According to Green, he and Culkin had become friendly,
and the actor decided to tag along while Green shot the movie in various European
locales where the group performed. As Green accompanied Culkin throughout Europe,
he came to realize just how famous the actor actually was, saying -
"I don't think there's anywhere he's not immediately recognized. People got excited."
Culkin reunited with Green for Green's bonkers 2016 take on "Aladdin."
"In general, our stance on creative endeavors is that everyone's amazing,
so we have a strict, no masterpiece policy."
In 2013, Macaulay Culkin posted a video on YouTube depicting himself eating a slice of pizza for four
minutes and 27 seconds. While some may have assumed it was conceptual performance art,
it was actually the precursor for the announcement that Culkin had formed a band,
The Pizza Underground. Culkin's outfit combined music with comedy by performing
parody versions of Velvet Underground songs, but with pizza-themed lyrics.
The Pizza Underground went on a tour in the U.K — and it did not go well. During a show
in Nottingham, one of Culkin's kazoo solos was cut short when disgruntled audience members
began hurling full pints of beer at the band. According to The Independent, Culkin stormed
off the stage after just 15 minutes. The band subsequently canceled all remaining tour dates.
In 2016, Culkin announced The Pizza Underground was releasing its
first album — which would also be its last, telling the Press Association -
"Essentially that's going to be the end of the band and this is
our gift to the world — 'thanks for enjoying our silly pizza band.'"
In 2017 Macaulay Culkin launched Bunny Ears,
which he described as being like a cross between Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop lifestyle site,
and the news-parodying website The Onion. As Culkin explained to Dazed -
"There's a hole in the 'celebrity lifestyle' articles market,
and we're filling it with fun, unique satire."
As the company expanded, Bunny Ears also evolved to include a podcast and various live events. In
2018, Culkin took to his site to reveal he wanted to legally change his middle name,
and solicited suggestions from fans. He winnowed those down to his top five favorites: The McRib
Is Back, Kieran, Shark Week, Publicity Stunt, and Macaulay Culkin. He went with the latter,
and announced he was legally changing his name to Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin. The
following year, Culkin was invited to ring the closing NASDAQ bell on behalf of his company.
Macaulay Culkin has spent the majority of his life trying to put distance between himself
and the "Home Alone" character he played when he was just 10-years-old. But by 2018,
Culkin felt comfortable enough to reprise the role in a clever TV commercial for Google Home.
In the spot, a grown-up Culkin awakens in the McCallister home, only to realize that
he has the place all to himself. Although Culkin was cool with recreating a few scenes
from "Home Alone" for the ad, fans should not expect him to ever recreate his iconic facial
expression from the film. Appearing on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Culkin lamented that
he's constantly besieged with requests to make "the face," something he refuses to do, saying -
"I've already been there, done that already, guys. I'm 37 now."
Macaulay Culkin placed even more space between his grown-up persona and his "Home
Alone" role when he was cast in the "Double Feature" season of FX's fright anthology
series "American Horror Story" in 2021. In one of the two stories in that season,
Culkin played an acid-tongued sex worker, earning critical praise for his performance.
"I have fancy cocktail parties, I invite all the celebrities… except for Belle Noir."
Interestingly, Paris Jackson, daughter of Michael Jackson, and Culkin's goddaughter, was cast in an
episode of the "American Horror Story" spinoff, "American Horror Stories." Prior to her audition,
Jackson asked Culkin for some advice that would help her land the role, telling E! News -
"He said overdo it at certain points. Kind of like, overact and kind of make it theatrical."
After ending his long-term relationship with Mila Kunis in 2011, Macaulay Culkin eventually began
seeing Brenda Song, a fellow child actor who'd spent several seasons on the Disney
Channel hit series "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody." In a 2020 interview with Esquire,
Culkin revealed that the couple were looking to start a family, saying -
"We practice a lot. We're figuring it out, making the timing work. Because nothing turns
you on more than when your lady comes into the room and says, 'Honey, I'm ovulating.'"
The couple eventually got their timing all figured out. In the spring of 2021, they welcomed their
first child, son Dakota. They wasted little time in expanding their family even further;
during a red-carpet interview in March 2023, Culkin's brother, "Succession" star Kieran Culkin,
revealed that his brother and Song had recently had a second baby. That child was subsequently
revealed to be another son called Carson, born in late 2022. During that same Esquire interview,
Song had nothing but sweet things to say about the father of her children, saying -
"You can't be around him and not be happy. People don't
realize how incredibly kind and loyal and sweet and smart he is."