Behind the laughs and box-office magic of Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin said his childhood unfolded in a very different reality – one defined by abuse, fear, and a moment so traumatic that it pushed him to call the police on his own father.

Before Macaulay Culkin became one of the most recognizable child stars in the world, his father, Kit Culkin, was already chasing his own acting ambitions.

Kit, who was born in 1944, appeared on Broadway in Becket in 1961 and in the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton. He also played a dancer in the original 1961 film version of West Side Story. Those early credits, however, would eventually be eclipsed by the extraordinary success of his third child.

Culkin shot to global fame as a child after starring in Home Alone, a role that turned him into a household name and one of the most successful child actors of all time, followed by major films including Uncle Buck and My Girl.

‘He was a bad man’

While his career soared, Culkin, now 45, has said his relationship with his father deteriorated, shaped by abuse and resentment that he believes stemmed from jealousy over his success.

Explaining the father-son dynamic years later, Culkin said Kit openly resented what he had achieved at such a young age. “Everything he tried to do in life, I excelled at before I was 10 years old,” he said on a 2018 episode of WTF with Marc Maron, according to People.

While speaking with Maron, he said Kit ruled through fear. “[He said] ‘Do good or I’ll hit you.’ He was a bad man. He was abusive, physically and mentally – I can show you all my scars if I wanted to.”

‘Nice swipe across the cheek’

One of the most heartbreaking moments from his childhood was revealed during an interview with Barbara Walters in 2000, when Culkin spoke in detail about the night he called the police on his father.

In the interview, Walters asked him directly: “Your mother said your father was drunk and abusive?”

Culkin answered without hesitation: “Yeah, definitely.”

He then described what led up to the incident, explaining that he had gone away for a weekend without telling his father, which triggered a violent reaction when he returned home.

“I went off somewhere for the weekend, and I didn’t tell him, and he got angry with me and gave me a nice swipe across the cheek,” Culkin said. “I just went down, and then he told me to get up, ‘get up’. I looked at him and I was like I’m not gonna fight you, because I knew that’s what he wanted me to do.”

The situation escalated further moments later. “He gave me another one, and my brother walked into the apartment or something like that, and I just said like eff you, I closed my door and locked it, called the cops on him,” Culkin told Walters.

Explaining his decision to involve the police, he added: “I just wanted him to know that I wasn’t going to let him get away with those kind of things anymore.”

Parents split in 1995

According to Culkin, his father – who managed his contracts and finances since he became famous – had gotten away with a lot.

Despite earning an estimated $50 million as a child, Culkin, now a father of two, has said he did not learn the true extent of his fortune until his parents’ custody battle in 1995 when it became clear his father had kept him completely in the dark about his own money.

“My father would hide newspapers from me so I wouldn’t read the stuff about him or find out how much I was making,” he said about Kit, who was known by filmmakers as difficult to work with.

Culkin then sought legal protection over the money he had earned.

Speaking to Esquire in 2020, the star of The Good Son clarified long-standing misconceptions about that period.

“We didn’t want to go with my father. It’s always misconstrued, that I ‘emancipated’ myself from my parents,” he said. “I legally took my parents’ names off of my trust fund and found an executor, someone who would look over my finances, just in case anyone wanted to stick their f***ing pinkie in the pie. But the next thing you know, the story was that I divorced my parents.”

‘He deserves it’

Decades later, Culkin has made it clear that the rift with his father was never repaired. In March 2025, he confirmed that he has not spoken to Kit since 1997, when the custody dispute ended.

Appearing on Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson’s Sibling Revelry podcast, Culkin said, “I haven’t spoken to him in, what would it be, about 30-something years?” He went on to explain why the distance remains absolute. “He deserves it, too. He’s a man who – he has seven kids, and now he has four grandkids, and none of them want anything to do with him,” he said, according to People.

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