The fate of Macaulay Culkin, Kevin from "Home Alone."

Macaulay Culkin witnessed early on how childhood fame can be a curse. When 1990 came out "Home Alone."his life was divided into "before" and "after": the film remained the highest-grossing comedy of all time for several decades, and the little protagonist became the most recognisable kid in the world!

The comedy made 10-year-old Macaulay a huge star, transforming his family from poor to wealthy, as they say. Except that gradually the comedy took on darker tones, turning the young actor's life into a continuous irony.....

A humble beginning

Keith Culkin and Patricia Brentrup. were not millionaires. Together with their children, of whom the couple, by the way, had seven, they lived in a small two-bedroom house in a far from prosperous neighbourhood of New York. The children huddled in these small rooms without doors, because (as Macaulay himself recalled):

"I guess we couldn't afford doors or anything..."

Kit worked for the Catholic Church, which gave the children a discount on parochial school tuition, and Patricia was a telephone operator. Future casting director Billy Hopkins recalled:

"They were so poor that I had to spend my own money to ensure Macaulay could get to and from rehearsal. Once during a theatre rehearsal he crawled under the bleachers looking for change that had fallen out of people's pockets..."

Nevertheless, Patricia worked hard to give the children some semblance of a of a normal family lifelike the Christmas tree and family dinners together. These simple things kept the family together for several years before Macaulay started making millions....

Father-manager - grief in the family

When money came into the house, with it came the first serious disagreements... As Macaulay tells it:

"We went through the lean years, the struggle, and when we were successful, I thought we would just sit back, enjoy it and relax. Instead, I realised that we were happier living on hunger and that we couldn't enjoy what the whole family had worked on together..."

The whale has become as the son's manager.and he didn't care, to put it mildly, about the feelings of a vulnerable child.

"During the filming of The Good Son in 1993, I realised that I couldn't go on like this anymore. I wanted to be a normal kid, playing and going out with my peers... Money didn't bring any joy to my life. I approached my father and told him that I wanted to take some time off - a month or so. But he was the one who only sniggered, and then I realised that my words meant nothing to him..."

In one of the interviews. long-time agent Macaulay told me:

"Neither Macaulay nor his brother Kieran wanted to play. It was a choice made for them. They just wanted to be kids, have friends and hide from everyone's attention..."

Macaulay couldn't walk in peace, just walk down the street... He was immediately surrounded by a crowd of gawkers, people poking their fingers at him, shouting all along the street: "It's him! It's definitely him!". But the saddest discovery awaited the boy ahead... Namely - when his parents were engaged in divorce proceedings, during which his father declared: he was ready to take custody on the condition that he was still in charge of the with my son's finances.

"I didn't really pay much attention to it until then... Of course, I was a bit tense about the way my father hid the newspapers from me. Now I realise that he just didn't want me to know how much I really earned. And I really didn't! And then it turned out that I had a multi-million dollar fortune that my father was running, which I had no idea about...".

In general, Macaulay does not like to remember about his father. According to the actor, this man became for him a good example of what kind of father should not be....

"He was cruel to my mother - how many times she cried because of him! He was cruel to my mother - how many times she cried because of him! He was only interested in money. I don't think parents should use their children like that - as some kind of machine for stamping dollars..."

A shattered childhood

Before he came of age, Macaulay acted in almost 20 films! Yes: his childhood was spent on film sets, in front of cameras, and many of the joys of that innocent age were unfamiliar to him... Perhaps the only one who understood him was the film's director. Michael Jackson. The pop king personally invited the Culkin family to his ranch, and according to Macaulay - the iconic singer was a child like himself at the time:

"We had very similar experiences and deprivations as children..."

Today Macaulay Culkin continues to star in films, but not so actively - his latest work to date is the film "Entergalactic.". Of course, there is little left of the former glory... In August 2023, the actor turned 43 years old, and he himself became a father - for the second time. And according to the man, who already at 10 years old earned millions of dollars, personal happiness above all the money in the world. Do you agree with him?