Macaulay Culkin

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There's things I don't get about young Macaulay Culkin in a couple of films he played in.
He was born in 1980. He played Kevin McCallister in Home Alone in 1990, so must have been 10, although the character was 8 and he looked 8 too. In 1992 he played Kevin again in Home Alone 2. In real life he was 12 but his character was 10 and he looked, and sounded, 10 too (his voice was still high and didn't sound like it was breaking any time soon). But when he starred at Thomas J in My Girl, him and his character was 11, but throughout the whole film he physically looked about 7. Also My Girl was supposed to be set in the 70's but you can clearly see that it's the 90's because of their hairstyles. I thought maybe it was filmed in the 80's and Macaulay Culkin was about 7-8, but when it said 1991 I was quite surprised.

I am not running him down by the way, I used to have a crush on him when I was a little girl and I love Home Alone and My Girl. I'm just a bit confused. Or do film people make their characters look almost whatever age they want?

Two excellent movies. As a child I remember watching My Girl then immediately rewinding it to watch it again. Loved that film. Saw it again recently. It's as good as I remember it. Poignant and beautifully acted. As for Macaulay's age, it's possible My Girl was shot earlier and they waited to release it?

He was also in The Pagemaster and Richie Rich. I watched those a lot too. =]

You have to factor in the post-production time on movies. For example, "Home Alone" was likely filmed in the summer of 1990, for a Christmas release that year. "My Girl" wasn't released until Thanksgiving of '91, which means it was also likely filmed in the spring or summer. "Home Alone 2" came out in the Christmas of '92, so the filming probably happened around the spring or summer of that year, too.

I used to like Macaulay Culkin, and to some extent, I still do. What really sunk his career was his father Kit, a failed actor and possible alcoholic who was living vicariously through almost all of his kids. It got so bad that Macaulay hasn't spoken to him in years, and refuses to do so.

A lot of times actors/actresses play characters that have a different age than theirs...though not sure any actor/actress could play any age role if the age difference is too extreme. I am pretty sure the female who plays a 14 year old female on Game Of Thrones is not really 14 she's probably older. I know in the movie 'Catch Me if You Can' with Leonoardo Decaprio, pretty sure he is supposed to be 17 or around there in a couple scenes where it shows some back-story of his not so wonderful relationship with parents...he certainly was not 17 when they made the movie.

I find it sad Macaulay Culkin got to the point he did health-wise though....kind of a shame cause did like quite a few movies he was in when I was a kid.

Culkin actually has done some decent work as an adult, such as in Party Monster, where he plays a narcissist who starts a party trend mixing bizarre costumes in with sex and drugs, ending in murder. It was a true story, too!
Also stars Seth Greene.

He and I share a birthday. (Not down to the year, but pretty close)

I saw a lot of his movies as a kid. I thought they were pretty cool, but now that I'm older I think more about him as an actor than the characters he played. He had it pretty rough. By his later films (Richie Rich, The Good Son) you could see he was just tired of it all. The Good Son was like a passing of the torch from one child star to another: Macaulay to Elijah Wood, who went on to a much more stable career as an adult.

I also have a harder time laughing at Home Alone and Home Alone 2. People tend to forget that those movies were pretty controversial when they came out, particularly with critics who were shocked by the relatively graphic and sadistic violence a kid was inflicting on two grown men. These days I can see their point. But you'd have to look to writer John Hughes as the source of that, not Culkin.

He's currently in a band called The Pizza Underground, who are a Velvet Underground cover band which tailors the lyrics to be about pizza. Honestly, it's kind of brilliant. I saw them live last year and while I'm not really itching to see them again, it was still pretty fun.

As far as *movies* go, I was never a big fan. He was never in anything I was particularly fond of.

My Girl is nearly unwatchable for me because of the way he died. It's tragic when anyone dies, but it seems to be worse when it's a child or a pet.

Home Alone 1-2 are instant Christmas classics, 3-4 were horrible.

But what about 'Home Alone 5: The Holiday Heist'?! Surely that was a celluloid masterpiece which will be screened on the walls of art galleries for generations to come! I just can't wait to put in my pre-order for the digitally restored and remastered Criterion Collection Blu-Ray!

I always thought it interesting that John Hughes wrote not just the first two but the third 'Home Alone' movie, as well. I've never been a big fan of the original, but one has to wonder how he took such a massive dive in quality from writing the first one to the third. Then again, compared to the classics he did in the '80s ('Sixteen Candles', 'Breakfast Club', 'Ferris Bueller', 'Weird Science', etc.), he did a lot of utter crap in the '90s ('Baby's Day Out', 'Dennis the Menace', 'Flubber', 'Maid in Manhattan', etc.).