It's now been more than a quarter of a century since Daniel Stern played Marv in Home Alone,
yet it remains his most recognizable role, despite the fact that he's never stopped acting.
Stern's stayed busy, so why don't we see him as often anymore?
Stern was the narrator on The Wonder Years between 1988 and 1993, and he directed a handful
of episodes along the way.
Soon enough, he decided he wanted to take a shot at directing a movie as well.
So in 1993, he helmed what would be his first, and last, feature: the family baseball comedy
Rookie of the Year.
It's the story of a 12-year-old pitcher who leads the Chicago Cubs to glory after discovering
that his recently broken arm has healed with super strength.
That's the sort of logic that you don't think to question as a kid, but the grown-up critics
reviewing the film weren't as easily impressed.
Despite the poor reviews, the film was a decent box office success, racking up over $50 million
in ticket sales.
Stern, who also acted in the movie as pitching coach Phil Brickma, went on to direct a few
TV episodes here and there afterwards, but Hollywood has yet to call him back in from
the bullpen.
The box office success of the Home Alone movies meant that Stern had little choice but to
carry on as a goofball in other films.
He reprised his City Slickers role in the 1994 sequel The Legend of Curly's Gold, and
he hammed it up in forgotten comedies like Bushwacked and Celtic Pride.
He then decided to take radical action to shake off his typecasting as he signed on
for the controversial 1998 comedy Very Bad Things.
The film is about a group of men on a bachelor weekend trying to dispose of a prostitute
one of them accidentally killed.
It was supposed to be edgy, but for the majority of critics, it crossed the line into bad taste
far too often.
Roger Ebert, for one, called it "reprehensible" in his one-star review.
Stern, however, did think it was funny, telling the AV Club in a 2014 interview that he "enjoyed
it thoroughly," but the gamble didn't exactly pay off for his career.
"He's gonna take out my mini van!"
"Don't you dare!"
"Hey!
Hey!
Hey!"
After Very Bad Things, Stern's next credit was a little-known crime caper called Viva
Las Nowhere, which failed to open any new doors for him.
From the outside it looked as though his time was up, but while his onscreen career was
floundering, he was prospering behind the scenes as a voice artist.
Stern did everything from Burger King and 7 Up commercials to Emmy-winning shows.
He found quite the good fit as the title character in the TV adaption of the Dilbert comic strip
between 1999 and 2000.
His other notable voice credits include the likes of Hey Arnold! and Family Guy.
Perhaps the biggest reason most of us haven't seen Daniel Stern in a long time is that he
went through a six-year stretch without appearing in any feature films.
His last credit before 2018 came in 2012 when he returned to the realm of festive comedy
with A Christmas Story 2.
But this was no Home Alone, however.
Far from it, in fact.
A straight-to-DVD sequel to a much-loved yuletide classic, A Christmas Story 2 was released
just days before a musical version of the original was set to debut on Broadway.
Warner Bros. was likely attempting to cash in on the hype surrounding the stage production.
Unfortunately, hardly anyone noticed, and the few critics that bothered to review the
film were less than enthusiastic about it.
In 2018, Stern made a not-so-glorious return to the screen in the Netflix original Game
Over, Man!, starring the Workaholics guys as hotel housekeepers who find themselves
in a Die Hard scenario.
The reviews were pretty much just as dreadful as they were for A Christmas Story 2.
"I'll make it up let me just get my head together and we'll talk about it all right?"
Stern might be proud of his own career accomplishments, but that's nothing compared to what he felt
after helping his son become the youngest California State Senator in history.
In 2016, the then 34-year-old Henry Stern won the honor of representing the 27th District,
which stretches from Malibu to the Santa Clarita Valley.
A Democrat, the younger Stern is the first millennial to make it to the California Senate,
and he plans on representing his age group well during his term.
One of Henry's biggest supporters on the trail was his father, who would regularly turn up
to support him at campaign events and endorse him via social media.
When Henry won, the elder Stern could barely contain his joy, revealing that he cried when
In an Instagram post, he wrote, "I have done all I can for my own children and they are
children no more."