Macaulay Culkin is opening up about his fraught relationship with his father and former manager, Kit Culkin.
Kit, 80, managed Macaulay’s career in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Macaulay, now 45, was a child prodigy with roles in hit movies such as Home Alone, Uncle Buck and more. At the time, Kit was well-documented to have been a tough person to work with, while Macaulay also struggled with his father personally.
Macaulay and his seven siblings — including Oscar winner Kieran Culkin — largely became estranged from their father after their mom, Patricia Brentrup, won custody of the children in 1997.
In an interview with Deadline published on Wednesday, November 26, Macaulay reflected on his father’s influence on his career and their difficult relationship when asked whether he has ever confronted his dad about the past.
“He had seven beautiful kids, and now he’s got five beautiful grandkids. None of them want anything to do with him. Nothing. As far as I know,” Macaulay said. “Listen, if my siblings want to have their relationship with him, they can. Whatever. I have these beautiful kids at home, and I don’t want his sins being washed on my kids.”
“That’s not the way that I do business, and that’s why he needed to go over … there. And he’s going to sit there, and he’s going to probably die alone, and I’m going to go like, ‘Yeah, that’s what you deserve,’” Macaulay continued. “I don’t need to say my piece to him. He knows that. He knows the things that he did.”
Macaulay recalled a specific incident that occurred when he was a child when Kit yelled at him in front of a friend, noting that he “didn’t like that” but had to “suck it up.” He said, “I took my lumps.”
The actor shared, “And then it was a while later and he was asking why I was being so cold to him. I said it was because of that. ‘It was because you embarrassed me in front of my friend.’ He’s like, ‘That didn’t happen.’ No, it did. It left a mark on me. ‘No, that didn’t happen.’”
“And you know what it was? It wasn’t denial. He actually did the mental gymnastics to get rid of that, like things never happened,” Macaulay went on. “This is who I’m dealing with. I can bring him into a therapist and we can talk about it for the next 50 years, but there are certain things he’s just going to wash away. This is who I’m talking to. This is who I’m dealing with. No, you go live in the over-there. I live in the over-here.”
Now a father himself, Macaulay said he constantly showers his two sons with praise and wants to break the cycle of emotional turmoil that he grew up with. (Macaulay shares sons Dakota, 4, and Carson, 2, with fiancée Brenda Song.)
“Listen, I love my kids endlessly. I give them everything. There was a certain word that really couldn’t get thrown around in my house that I throw around like a gunslinger. Proud,” he said. “I never really got a lot of ‘attaboys.’ My kid was doing his recital, was supposed to play the bug who has to go get the egg. He was so excited. The curtain opens, and he freezes. He runs offstage, crying. I got up from my seat, ran all the way to the back. The first thing I said was, ‘I’m so proud of you. You got up there in the first place. That’s amazing, dude. Man, you must have been so scared. But you did it anyway.’”
“That’s what I give. I give them that. I’m proud of you no matter what. That’s the trick, for me. Unconditional acceptance,” Macaulay added.
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