Kieran Culkin opens up about the tragic death of older sister Dakota

Kieran Culkin got candid about the impact that his older sister’s death had not only on him but his entire family, 16 years on from the tragic accident that took her life.

Dakota Culkin passed away after being hit by a car in Los Angeles in 2008 when she was 29 years old, and Kieran was 26. 

The deeply private actor opened up in an interview with CBS Sunday Mornings about her loss, explaining how he can still feel the effects of her death almost two decades on.

“I only knew who I was because of who my siblings are,” he said in the interview. “So, to lose one was losing a big piece of myself.”

Kieran is one of six siblings, including his famous older brother and Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin. He also had a half-sister, Jennifer, from his father’s previous marriage; however, she sadly passed away from a drug overdose in 2000. 

“Losing one of my favorite people in the world, it doesn’t get better,” he continued. “It doesn’t get easier, it’s just you get used to it.”

The actor won three Emmys for his turn as Roman Roy in the hit HBO show Succession, a role in which he profoundly connected with his late sister.

“After a couple seasons on Succession, I realized there was some stuff that Roman did that I was like, ‘Oh, that’s my sister,'” he said. 

“That was her sense of humor. She could find exactly what the right thing to make fun of you was that would get to you but be really funny and make the room laugh. That was her.”

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While the father of two generally stays tight-lipped on family affairs, he has been open in the past about the deep pain that losing his sister brought him. 

“That’s the worst thing that’s ever happened, and there’s no sugar coating that one,” Kieran told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021.

“Each one of us handled it very differently,” he said of his siblings. “I think everyone was just torn up inside.”

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Despite the years crawling on, he explained that time cannot heal wounds like this one. “I accepted at the time that this is going to be forever, and it’s never going to be fine,” he said. “It’s always going to be devastating.”

“I still weep about it out of nowhere. Something funny she did will pop in the head and make me laugh, and then I’m weeping.”

Kieran lamented that his sister would never know his children, whom he welcomed with his wife, Jazz Charlton. 

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“Sometimes it’s knowing that she’s not going to meet my kids and they don’t get to have her and it’s hard to describe what she was like,” he said. 

For his part, Macaulay paid tribute to his late sister by naming his eldest son Dakota in her honor; he welcomed the bub in 2021 with his fiancée, Brenda Song. The child star told Esquire magazine in 2020 how he had spoken to his sister the day that she passed away. 

“She had a roommate at the time. She said, ‘We just watched Party Monster, and we wanted to compliment you.’ She said, ‘I want you to stay focused and enthused.’ I was like, ‘Thanks. You too. Go to sleep.’ And then she went out to go get some Gatorade and cigarettes, and she got hit by a car.”