There are so many horror stories of child stars who were exploited or worked to their limits by their own parents. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Macaulay Culkin’s father and former manager, Kit, made his set environments toxic for more than just his son. “Kit Culkin’s demands resulted in a year’s delay in filming, in script changes and in a revolving door of directors and producers,” The New York Times wrote in an article about 1993’s “The Nutcracker,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. In it, Macaulay played the Nutcracker Prince.
In his 2007 memoir, “Junior,” Macaulay Culkin wrote that his father was “physically and mentally abusive,” leading him to file for emancipation from his mother and father, according to Hello! However, in 2020, Culkin told Esquire that this story is always “misconstrued.” He clarified that he “legally took [his] parents’ names off” his trust fund and found an “unbiased” executor instead.
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Regardless, Macaulay has always been straightforward about the fact that his father was not a good guy. In 2018, Macaulay told the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast that the root of his issues with his father was that the “Home Alone” star was bigger than his father as an actor. “My father was jealous of me. He was a bad man,” he said. “He was abusive. Everything he tried to do in life, I excelled at before I was 10 years old.”
