Macaulay Culkin Reveals Why He Gave Up Acting After ‘Home Alone’

Today, at 45, the actor recalled the reasons that pushed him to make this decision when he was still a child

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Summary
Macaulay Culkin, 45, revealed that he decided to quit acting after “Home Alone” due to his isolation and lack of interaction with people his age, prioritizing the shared experiences of his youth.

Macaulay Culkin told People that his children often watch Home Alone and love the movie, but they don't know he's Kevin. — Macaulay Culkin told People that his children often watch Home Alone and love the movie, but they don’t know he’s Kevin.

Photo: Instagram @culkamania / Flip

“Home Alone,” a classic film released in 1990 and considered one of the most iconic of the Christmas season, stars Macaulay Culkin as the protagonist. However, despite finding fame after starring in the film, when he was just 10 years old, the actor chose to take a break from his career.

Today, at 45, the actor recalled the reasons which pushed him to make this decision. “What I wanted was to be around people my age. You have to remember: A lot of the things I did when I was a kid…I wasn’t working in casting. It was just me,” he said recently during an appearance on the Mythical Kitchen podcast.

The loneliness aspect was a determining factor in the star rethinking her career. “I watch ‘Home Alone’ and I think, ‘Oh my God, I’m in ‘Cast Away,’ but he had a volleyball to talk to,” he explained of the 2000 film starring Tom Hanks.

“People say, ‘Oh, what was it like working with Joe Pesci?’ And I say, “Have you seen the movie?” We do maybe two scenes together. And then it’s me, in a house, alone, practically alone at home,” he said, referring to the film’s plot, in which the character lives isolated on a desert island after a plane crash.

In 1994, at a slower pace, Culkin starred in “Riquinho” and then only returned to the screen nine years later, in Paty Monster (2003). “I wanted to go out, I wanted to go out with girls, I wanted to go out with people my age. I wanted to, you know, go to a party,” he detailed. “I wanted to do this kind of thing. You have no idea how many bar mitzvahs I’ve missed.”

To explain the difficulty of dealing with the attention that fame brings, the actor made a curious analogy, then detailed how success was never a goal in his life.

“You can’t go back, you can’t put the dough back in the tube (…) For me, it happened like that,” he said. “I didn’t pull my parents’ sleeves and say, ‘Mom, Dad, I want to be famous. I want to make films.’ I just started doing it, I was good at it and people kept calling me.”