What Happened to Macaulay Culkin’s Acting Career After Earning Millions of Dollars From Home Alone Movies?

The entertainment business is such a field where unpredictable happenings are not rare. While some actors never get their due popularity, some achieve stardom at a young age, and some of them get intertwined with fame and personal challenges that force them to make sudden career decisions. Macaulay Culkin has been one of them.

Culkin remains one of the most popular child actors due to his breakout role in the Home Alone series. His comedic talent and witty one-liners gave him international fame in the early 90s. However, the actor’s career path has not been smooth since then.

What happened to Macaulay Culkin after Home Alone

Macaulay Culkin took his first steps on the stage and in front of cameras when he was about four years old and acted in theater shows and TV films. His first major film was in John Hughes’ Uncle Buck with John Candy, but his global fame came with Home Alone.

According to Box Office Mojo, Home Alone collected over $476.6 million, and Home Alone 2 about $358.9 million globally (via Box Office Mojo). As per the Resident magazine, Culkin earned around $110,000 for the first movie, and by the time of the sequel, his salary went to around $4.5 million.

Culkin earned an additional $25 million after the release of Home Alone 2 due to a clause in his contract. Daniel Stern, who played the role of Marv Murchins, revealed in his memoir Home and Alone that Culkin earned an extra 5% from the profits of the sequel.

However, it seems like the other side of fame started to play its role in Culkin’s career at that time. Richie Rich was the last major movie before he made the unexpected decision to retire from acting in 1995. In an interview with Time Magazine, Culkin said (via BuzzFeed),

When I stopped, I just thought it was over, and I was never, ever going to do it again… I was just hoping to disappear off the face of the earth.

The actor decided to leave Hollywood at the time, as he was dealing with other personal problems. According to LA Times, he was going through a legal battle over his trust fund and also his parents’ battle over his custody. He even refused to come back for Home Alone 3 and wanted to have a private life back then.

Culkin was absent from the public eye from the late 90s to up until the early 2000s for almost a decade. The time away helped him to grow beyond his character of Kevin McCallister. 

Macaulay Culkin’s return to Hollywood

Culkin surprised everyone when he returned to acting after nine years by doing the rather difficult role of Michael Alig in the 2003-released crime drama, Party Monster. It shifted his filmography as well as image from his family-oriented films, as he was willing to play more serious and challenging roles.

He later starred in the 2004 black comedy Saved! and also appeared as a guest star in TV shows like Will & Grace. These performances were not huge critical or commercial successes, but Culkin proved his ability to act as well as his desire to make a career of his own.

Even in recent years, Macaulay Culkin has not failed to surprise fans with his choices. His role in American Horror Story: Double Feature was loved by both fans and critics. Apart from that, Culkin has also appeared in other films, TV shows, and animated projects like Changeland, The Righteous Gemstones, Entergalactic, The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy, and so on.

Culkin also formed The Pizza Underground band that used to perform pizza-themed covers of Velvet Underground songs. However, it disbanded in 2018. Although Home Alone will be something that will forever be associated with Macaulay Culkin, his later movies prove that the actor can handle different challenging roles.

Home Alone movies are available to stream on Disney+.