After Home Alone became the highest-grossing comedy of the '90s, its young star was heralded as one of the most popular and financially successful child actors of all time. Macaulay Culkin's celebrity status and natural acting chops catapulted his financial portfolio into the $50 million range. However, behind the scenes, his father was trying to manage every aspect of his life.
Kit Culkin acted as his son’s manager, and reportedly physically and verbally abused the Home Alone star. At the age of 14, Macaulay decided to give up acting. Allegedly, his turbulent relationship with his father was a prime factor.
Macaulay Culkin Claims His Relationship With His Father Was Always Rocky
In a 2001 interview with New York magazine, Culkin discussed his childhood growing up with many siblings and little money. Prior to finding success in Hollywood, Culkin described those years as "all-right times for my family." He claims his relationship with his father, however, was never solid. "My father was always, you know, abusive, but it didn’t get really, really, really bad until later on."
Culkin's earliest childhood memories consist of helping Kit at the Catholic church where he was employed. For young Culkin, the experience made him link religion with his father:
I’d help him set up Mass and stuff like that. It gave me a very tainted view of religion because I saw the man-behind-the-curtain sort of thing. You see your father taking the body of Christ and the blood of Christ down from the tabernacle or whatever, and everybody’s believing it’s, you know, a big holy thing, and you’re like, "It’s just a bottle of wine and some crackers from a box in the back!"
The Entire Family Lived In A One-Bedroom Railroad Apartment
Prior to Macaulay's mega-Hollywood success and millionaire status, the entire family of seven kids and two parents lived in a one-bedroom railroad-style apartment on Second Avenue in New York City. Macaulay's brother Kieran described the family's living conditions in a 2018 article in Vanity Fair: "It was just a hallway, and there were no separating doors, except for the bathroom, which didn't have a lock. They raised seven kids in that apartment - for years! They just kept bringing babies home to this little space."
Kieran added, "Some of us would go to school. Some would not."
Billy Hopkins, a casting director who gave Macaulay his first acting gig, described just how poor the Culkin family really was: "They were so poor I had to use my own money to make sure that he got to and from rehearsal. Macaulay would crawl under the bleachers at the theater to look for change that had fallen out of people’s pockets. They were like the Beverly Hillbillies."
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According To Culkin, His Father’s Attacks Were Both Physical And Mental
In 2018, the former child star sat down with Marc Maron for an episode of his WTF podcast. The pair chatted for an extended period, and Culkin talked about everything, from retiring at the age of 37 to his friendship with Michael Jackson.
The Home Alone actor did not shy away from discussing the relationship he had with his manager-father, Kit. Macaulay said of his now-estranged dad: "He was abusive. Physically and mentally."
The Tension Escalated When They Began Traveling For Culkin’s Films
Because Kit was Macaulay's manager, he traveled with his son to auditions and film sets. Despite their working relationship, Macaulay says they were never close.
Macaulay told Maron on WTF, "I’m going around the country, locked in a room with a man who didn’t like me."
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- Home Alone
- 20th Century Fox
Kit Also Allegedly Targeted The Rest Of The Family
Macaulay was the third of seven siblings born to Kit Culkin and Patricia Brentrup (the pair never married). Macaulay had four brothers and two sisters: Shane, Dakota, Kieran, Quinn, Christian, and Rory. They were all in the entertainment business in some capacity at one time or another.
The My Girl star revealed on Maron's podcast that he was not the only member of the family who suffered both mentally and physically at the hands of his dad. Culkin alleges that his siblings and mother were also victims of Kit's attacks. Culkin said of his father, "He was just a bad dude. A bad abusive man. He was a piece of work."
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- Home Alone
- 20th Century Fox
Culkin Surmises Kit Was Jealous Of Him Because Of His Early Success In Life
Just like his son Macaulay, Kit Culkin was also a child actor. However, unlike Macaulay, Kit was never able to make it as a thespian. On WTF, Macaulay explained to Maron the extent of his father's acting career: "He did some stuff when he was a kid... He pretty much never made it beyond chorus."
According to his son, Kit suffered a terrible accident while performing an Off-Broadway version of King Lear:
He is so into his part, he closes his eyes. And so he's doing a soliloquy, and he's getting closer and closer to the edge of the stage. He doesn't notice because he's so into the part because he's blind. And then he spills into the first row and hurts himself. This is opening night.
The embarrassing accident was enough to turn Kit away from acting forever. In Macaulay's opinion, his own success at such a young age made his father jealous. "Everything that he tried to do in his life, like, I excelled at before I was 10 years old," he said.
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