Macaulay Culkin Cleans House

Macaulay Culkin is having a rummage — through his wardrobe, mostly.

On the line to Los Angeles, I’m at both my desk in London and propped up somewhere inside the actor’s sprawling SoCal closet, while he digs. A self-confessed “pack rat”, Culkin’s got more clothes than he can cope with. Not long ago, one of his rails gave up entirely — collapsed under the weight of it all — and now everything’s in domestic disarray at his feet. “It looks like a grenade just went off,” he calls back to the camera.

But it’s hard not to feel like he’s sorting through something else, too: past selves, old roles, the odd conviction or crumb of dogma picked up along the way. What still fits. What doesn’t. What’s worth keeping. “I’m putting stuff aside,” says Culkin, edging back into frame. “Stuff that doesn’t fit my lifestyle anymore.” Again, ostensibly talking about the clothes. But nearly four decades on from his breakout roles in Uncle Buck and Home Alone, the former child star has more clutter in his closet than almost anyone else in Hollywood. More bits, more bobs, more baggage.

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“It’s time to clean out the closet,” he nods. “I sold my New York place a little over a year ago, and I’d been there for about 26 years. So much stuff. And with a big move like that, some of it’s bound to get lost.”

Culkin says that L’Wren Scott, the late model and designer, was once his stylist — “a long, long time ago”. He remembers sitting cross-legged on the floor of her house, chain-smoking cigarettes while she handed him things to try on. There’s a story about a jacket he’ll tell me later. But there’s also one about a suit — the first he ever had made for himself.

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“Well, L’Wren got it made for me really,” he says. “Burgundy corduroy, single-breasted, with this rainbow-y, shimmery lining. It was quite casual, but there was something about it. Technically, it’s still in my closet, although I definitely don’t have the body of the 20-year-old I once was.”

He disappears again. The scrape of hanger against rail. A faint rustle.

“I’m staring at it right now,” he calls back. A pause. “I don’t know, it was such a weird, left-of-centre idea. A corduroy suit for a 20-year-old back in — what, 2001?”

The suit was symbolic; Culkin’s first real stab at establishing a sense of personal style. But it was far from his first brush with a tailor’s tape. The actor’s Home Alone bobble hats and duffel coats were never designed for precision, nor his boy-next-door blue jeans in My Girl. But his final film for a decade — 1994’s Richie Rich — saw Culkin fitted for custom brass-buttoned blazers, pinstripe three-pieces, even a tuxedo.

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“And all really carefully tailored,” says Culkin. “But I was just about to turn 14, so I grew almost two inches over the course of that production, and they had to refit all these really expensive suits on me. When it came to child acting, they realised then that I was on a clock.”

Producers, Culkin says, had somewhat pre-empted this, casting “super tall” actors alongside him, including the six-foot-five Edward Herrmann. “They were trying to shrink me,” he laughs, lightly. “Trying to keep the genie in the bottle.”

It’s the delicate dance of the child actor. The morning before our call, HBO dropped the first trailer for its glossy new Harry Potter adaptation — perhaps the biggest influx of child actors since Chris Columbus, who directed Home Alone, helmed the first two Harry Potter films. So what is this new batch of young talent stepping into?

“I always try not to speak for other kids and their experience,” says the actor, “but I didn’t do a lot of collaborative stuff. I wasn’t in The Goonies, you know? I wasn’t in those ensemble movies. I was often alone, like Castaway — and even he had a volleyball to talk to!”

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It wasn’t until 2004 that Culkin worked with actors his own age — on the high school comedy Saved!. “And man, that was so much fun. It felt like summer camp — like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been missing out on?’ So at least [the Harry Potter actors] will be surrounded by people who’ve had similar experiences and upbringings. I think that’ll be beneficial. Because it’ll also be like being stuck in a submarine with each other, so I hope they get along.”

But starting young, Culkin says, also had its advantages — learning lines, for one. As a child, he had “a pretty photographic memory,” able to hold entire scripts in his mind’s eye. “That’s definitely gone away,” he says. “I’m definitely not nine years old anymore. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast! I’m no longer a spring chicken. I’m an old dog now.”

That hasn’t stopped him learning new tricks. Culkin’s memory might not be what it was — more scattered these days, like his jumbled closet — but a little over a decade ago, he stepped away from acting and moved to France for five years, in a bid to learn a whole new language. “But most people just wanted to practise their English with me!”

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The move to Paris, he says, was impulsive. “I kind of did it on a whim. But I was at a place in my life where I could just pick up and move on a limb, not hurt anybody and not affect anything. I thought I'd be remiss if I didn’t do it, because I wasn’t always going to have that opportunity.”

He misses it. Not just Paris itself — “a very walkable town,” ideal for a native New Yorker — but the rhythms of the country. French life suited him, he says, in ways he hadn’t expected. “I always find myself trying to acclimate to different cultures. But in France I realised I was already acclimated. They eat very light breakfasts, but heavy, late dinners. That’s the way I like to eat.”

“And, sometimes, the language barrier was actually a nice thing,” he adds. “Because I kind of wanted to step back from society. I painted a lot, and I’ve never read more in my life. I had a nice routine. Plus I knew where the best baguette in my neighbourhood was.”

But all good things. And once he met his fiancée, Brenda Song — another former child star — it was time to come home. “She got to see my apartment there,” he says. “My lifestyle. And that’s when my journey there felt complete.”

It marked the beginning of something bigger. Today, Song and Culkin have two young sons. He often scrolls through Disney+, looking for things to keep his children entertained, sometimes stumbling across Song’s old shows — Nickelodeon and Disney Channel sitcoms from another life. “I get a kick out of it,” he says. “It’s a tiny sliver of who she was before we met.”

This runs both ways, of course. “She had no idea I was in a Sonic Youth music video,” Culkin says of his top-hatted, leather-cuffed appearance in the band’s Sunday video. Music, though, has always played somewhere in his background. Google still insists Culkin is an “American actor and musician” — a label he might dispute, admitting he “doesn’t really play anything”, despite being a founding member of comedy rock band The Pizza Underground.

Formed, as he puts it, “during the death throes of anti-folk,” Culkin considers the now-separated outfit “goofy”. He played kazoo. Their drummer played a pizza box. The songs, which parodied The Velvet Underground, included ‘I’m Waiting for the Delivery Man’ and ‘Take a Bite of the Wild Slice’.

He still eats pizza, just doesn’t sing about it. Pepperoni-sausage-mushroom, if he’s indulging. “No peppers. No olives,” he says. “And you have to be surgical with your anchovies.”

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But his love of music runs deeper than toppings. It began, he says, during that growth-spurting, Richie Rich-ing summer — when Culkin first discovered Hendrix, Dylan, The Beatles: what he calls “the foundational stuff”.

“I’m actually starting to show my kids certain things now,” he says. Queen are family favourites, as are The Ramones — ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ is often on repeat. “I don’t really do Spotify,” he adds. “But I have a good collection. If I like an album, I’ll buy it and put a copy of it somewhere.”

‘Somewhere’ being the word — especially today. Culkin has various teetering piles of clothes dotted about the place: some to donate, some to keep. A third contains clothes he no longer wears, but is setting aside for his sons. “Like some of my old decal T-shirts. They’re going to be vintage in maybe 10, 15 years’ time.” When he started the clear-out, there was one piece in particular he was looking for: a brown leather rhinestone jacket, studded with stars, moons and comets. Courtesy, again, of L’Wren Scott.

“She once showed me this whole rack of stuff, asked me to peruse it. I saw this jacket. At first, I said: ‘I’m not trying that thing on.’ ‘We’ll see about that,’ she replied. So I tried a few things on, then eventually gave in. And as soon as I put it on, I was like: ‘This jacket belongs to me. It was made for me.’

“So, during the move from New York, I said: ‘I better find that dang jacket.’ And boom — there it was. And I’ve already set it aside, but for me. I’ll probably be 70 years old and still wearing that rhinestone jacket. And my kids will be like: ‘Why?!’”

Fashion snuck up on Culkin, and has quietly become another strand of his identity. In a nineties New York, he says, he “cut his teeth” by wearing oversized army surplus, Dr. Martens and dyeing his hair burgundy — “more than once”.

“But then I veered off,” he continues. “Went straight comfort for a while.” It peaked around six months ago, when Culkin returned from the school run in pink Crocs, sweatpants and a T-shirt bearing a large orangutan on the front. “Very bad; very dad,” he laughs. “Like I’d given up.” So he and Song made a decision: to dress a little better. “I decided to embrace my middle-agedness. No more orangutans, you know?”

Great apes are out, then. But caterpillars? They’re in. Culkin recently returned to his beloved Paris for Fashion Week, appearing at the Jean Paul Gaultier and Dior shows. At the latter, he made a social media splash in a Jonathan Anderson-designed sweater featuring The Very Hungry Caterpillar, one of the board-book classics in regular rotation at home. And he’s already got an idea of the character he’d like to wear next.

“The cow from Goodnight Moon,” he nods. “That would lend itself to a similar kind of nostalgia. It’s iconic — although I never had that read to me. I only read it once I became a parent. But it now holds a special place in my heart. So I’d love to see a Hungry Caterpillar-esque sweater, but with the cow jumping over the moon from Goodnight Moon.”

Take note, designers. Because Culkin’s star is rising again. In recent years, he’s slipped back into acting — on his own terms. American Horror Story. The Righteous Gemstones. And most recently, Fallout, where he plays a Caesar-lite legion leader in a post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert. He’ll likely reprise this role, which is all bronze chest plates, billowing red cloaks and leather lappets. “I think,” he says, “probably the coolest costume I’ve ever had.”

Culkin’s process, though, isn’t quite like that of other actors. Then again, neither is he. “I’m more a vibes kind of person than anything else,” he shrugs. “It’s a George Plimpton, X-factor, kind-of-thing. It’s je ne sais quoi — things speak to me if they’re unique, different. I wouldn’t walk into a room and say I want to play a doctor, a lawyer, a baseball player. I don’t think that way. But if I see an interesting story, or a fascinating filmmaker? I’ll really throw myself at it.”

His legacy, of course, was secured the moment he fended off those two hapless burglars three decades ago. In 2023, it was even literally set in stone, with Culkin receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He wore a double-breasted jacket to the ceremony — “I don’t think I could have pulled that off at 20, but now I’m 45? Yeah, I can rock that” — attended by his Home Alone mother, Catherine O’Hara. She gave a speech before the star was unveiled: “I know you worked really hard,” she said, “but you made acting look like the most natural thing in the world.”

He’s been thinking about that a lot lately. “When Catherine passed away in January, that hit me,” he says. “That hit me pretty good, ’cause, you know, it was just too soon. And I felt that we had unfinished business. I definitely feel like I had unfinished business with her, you know? I feel like I owed her a favour — and I don't like having an outstanding debt.”

His other Home Alone parent, John Heard, died in 2017. Other co-stars have gone too: John Candy, Burt Lancaster, Farrah Fawcett. But that, Culkin says, is the way of the child star: more loss, sooner. “I’m not the tip of the sphere,” he says. “I’m the butt of the sphere. I’m the caboose. I’m bringing up some of that old Hollywood guard kind of thing — I’m going to be one of the last people standing when it comes to that kind of stuff.”

“But my life is unique to me,” he adds. “I don’t really have that many contemporaries when it comes to this stuff. I can’t look left and right and think: ‘Oh, those people have had a similar experience to me.’ But I try to cherish that as much as I can. I feel like I’m living a really uniquely wonderful life.”

Add that realisation to the pile. It’s like everything else the actor’s been sorting through — clothes half-folded, memories half-placed, nothing wholly kept, nothing entirely left behind. Rather, he’s just rummaging, re-evaluating. A rhinestone jacket here, a pizza box there. Corduroy, Castaway, caterpillars — and the best baguette in Paris. They’re all in Culkin’s closet. These days, he’s just figuring out where they belong.