It’s been 28 years since the release of one of the most watched and most beloved Christmas movies of all time, Home Alone. The film, which spawned four sequels (one of which, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, starred Culkin) made Culkin the most popular child actor of the early ’90s and indisputably one of the most popular child actors of all time.
However, Culkin’s acting career has faded into the background since 1994’s Ri¢hie Ri¢h, and while the actor has maintained a low profile over the last 14 years, he occasionally resurfaces, as he did in a music video for his pizza-themed Velvet Underground tribute band, the time he was spotted wearing a meta-Ryan Gosling T-Shirt, and that he made out with Har Mar Superstar in a dive bar in Montana.
The truth is, Macaulay Culkin — who is now 38 years old — basically walked away from acting in 1994 after the divorce of his parents. After their divorce, Culkin — who never got along with his father, who he calls physically and emotionally abusive — was able to remove his parents names from his bank accounts through emancipation, meaning that Culkin would be able to inherit his own money when he turned 18 years old. It also allowed the 14-year-old Culkin to have a fairly normal high-school experience. “I just wanted to get laid and smoke pot,” he told Marc Maron on his podcast earlier this year. (Culkin remains estranged from his father, to this day).
During a lengthy career break in the late 1990s, Culkin married actress Rachel Miner (Sons of Anarchy, Supernatural), but that marriage was short lived. They separated in 2000 after only two years and officially divorced in 2002, around the time he began dating Mila Kunis (Ted, Black Swan). That relationship lasted nine years, but Culkin prefers to not to talk about his romantic life. However, Mila Kunis did talk about their break-up earlier this year on The Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard:
“I had a horrible break-up,” she told Shepard. “I had a horrible, horrible break-up. I f–ked up. I was an a–hole in my 20s and I’ll be the first to admit it. It took me a long time to come out and be like, ‘Yeah. You know what? I was a dick’ and it sucked and I own it now.”
“It’s f–ked up what I did,” she continued. “And it’s f–ked up how I did it.” What she actually did Kunis does not reveal, except that she needed to “figure myself out. I genuinely needed to understand why I did what I did.”
While dating Kunis, Culkin appeared in a few movies, most notably the 2004 film Saved!. He also did voice work on Robot Chicken. During the early 2010s, Culkin toured with his band The Pizza Underground, which remained active from 2013 until 2017. In 2014, the band was booed off stage during a concert in Nottingham, England while members of the audience began throwing pints of beer at them.
More recently, Culkin has spent a lot of time living in Paris, where he paints and has been working on a follow-up to his autobiographical novel Junior. He also occasionally pops up on Reddit AMAs to answer random questions. This year, he also hosted the weekly podcast Bunny Ears with his friend Matt Cohen, which has been on hiatus since Halloween.
Me, Bunny Ears CCO/EIC @shawnwrites and the weirdos at @cinemassacre
Rental Review episode should pop up soon! pic.twitter.com/hLeuwiAPkX
— Macaulay Culkin (@IncredibleCulk) December 21, 2018
Most recently, however, Culkin appeared in a series of Google Home commercials reliving some of the film’s most iconic scenes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKYABI-dGEA
Most importantly, Culkin seems to have dodged the curse that sometimes afflicts child stars. Indeed, asked in a recent AMA if he was “happy,” Culkin responded in the affirmative.
