One of the most successful child stars of the ‘90s who wasn’t an Olsen twin, Macaulay Culkin was the movie star every kid wanted to be, and he’s one of the rare movie stars where most of his best movies were made by the age of 14. He’s also the rare 14-year-old to take a voluntary career hiatus before successfully cutting financial and communicative ties with his allegedly abusive father. He’s still close with his fictional mom Catherine O’Hara, but not so much with his real dad.
It’s not a topic the actor addresses often, but he returned to it while guesting on the podcast Sibling Revelry with co-hosts and famed siblings Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson. For some connective tissue, Culkin guest-starred in the former’s already renewed Netflix hit Running Point, while Hudson had a stealth audio cameo in Home Alone 2. The trio talked about the Good Son star’s full career and current family life with fianceé Brenda Song and their children, which all ties into the actor reflecting on the past.
Macaulay Culkin Talks Taking A Stand During Parents' Custody Battle
For all the attention that Macaulay Culkin and his siblings got on-screen, their father (and former actor) Kit Carson quickly started both making headlines and causing headaches as his millionaire son's manager. He was reportedly so controlling that studio execs weren't fond of him or his perceived ego during Macaulay's rapid rise to super-stardom.
At the point when the teen stepped away from acting, his parents (who were never married) split up and entered a stressful and highly publicized custody battle that revovled largely around their son's fortune. By this point, Culkin says he was so fed up that he says he pulled the rare move of playing his "I'm a famous person" card. As he put it:
I remember it was during the whole custody thing, I wanted nothing to do with my fucking father. Like, he was just the worst. And the judge was like, ‘You have to do visitations with him,’ essentially. I didn’t say this to the judge — I was a smartass, but wasn’t that much of a smartass — but I told my lawyer, ‘Yeah, I’m not doing that.’ He’s like, ‘Well you know, you’ll be in contempt of court,’ and this and that. I go, ‘Okay, well how about this? I dare the judge to put me in jail for not wanting to visit [my] abusive father. Actually, I’m going to double-down on that. I double-dare him to arrest the most famous kid in the world.’
Though it unfortunately meant he had to grow up quite quickly by learning more than most teens do about trust funds and legal documents, Macaulay Culkin did later successfully block his parents from gaining access to his finances, which were reportedly around $17 million at the time.
Macaulay Culkin Reveals How Long It's Been Since He's Spoken With His Father
For all that he was slightly uncomfortable challenging a judge in the midst of a custody battle, the Party Monster star successfully severed ties with Kit Culkin during this period, and they have remained entirely estranged ever since. When asked if he'd talked to his dad at all in the meantime, he answered with:
No, I haven’t spoken to him in, what would be, about 30-something years. He deserves it, too. He’s a man who has seven kids, and now he has four grandkids, and none of them want anything to do with him.
Following up when asked whether he knew for sure or not if Kit Culkin was still alive, the actor said:
As far as I know, he’s alive. As far as I know, I think my older brother had some contact with him at one point, but I think that turned sour pretty fast.
As opposed to the old adage that claims time heals all wounds, it would appear the rift created between the father and his son(s) won't soon be readily filled back up.
How That Fractured Parental Relationship Inspired Macaulay Culkin's Parental Skills
As negative as Macaulay Culkin feels about his experiences with his father during his early life, the AHS: Double Feature co-star didn't come away from those years with only a hardened exterior and foul feelings. But early on, he gained a sense of empathy out of it, and later surmised that he and his father would never be on the same page, because he doesn't think Kit will ever view himself as being the antagonist. In his words:
As a man myself, I would know that I fucked up, that I really must have done something wrong. And I have more than an inkling that he does not feel that way, like we’re wrong and he’s right. He’s one of those kind of narcissistic, crazy people.
For all that Kevin McCallister's parents were forgetful on a horrifying scale, there's no question that they loved their son. But in his private life, Culkin was motivated very early on to not repeat any of the parental mistakes that his dad was responsible for, and still doesn't quite understand why anyone would want to destroy so many familial relationships. According to Culkin:
It’s one of my earliest memories of him was, ‘When I grow up, this is how I’m not going to be with my kids.’ And now that I got kids of my own, it makes me even more… It kicks up some dust, and I kind of go, ‘I can’t believe he was like that. All these lovely kids, and talented kids.’ And the thing is, he had a certain amount of resentment towards me, I think is what it was. Because he wanted to be an actor, and he kind of did some stuff. . . . I instantly got the lead stuff in the ballet company. I instantly booked all these things like that, and I think he resented me for that. I think he kind of hated me a little bit for that.
Culkin said that during the years prior to the custody battle, he and his father would butt heads often, and that he would "take his whoopings." But that the whole time those incidents would happen, he would just think to himself: "I'm going to win in the end." And that no matter what would happen, he just knew he was going to outlast his father's actions and behavior to thrive on his own.
And at this point in his life, with a monumental career behind him and a new role in Fallout Season 2 ahead of him, it's probably safe to say that Macaulay Culkin is indeed the winner.
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