Macaulay Culkin talks auditioning for Tarantino and finding love in revealing new interview
The actor gives a rare glimpse into his, yes, very normal life.
February 12, 2020 11:31 a.m. EST
February 14, 2020 11:00 p.m. EST
Spending his days mainly focused on his website Bunny Ears, Culkin has begun to dabble in acting once again. He auditioned for Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood, but says it was a disaster. “I wouldn’t have hired me. I’m terrible at auditioning anyway, and this was my first audition in like eight years.”When it came to appearing in 2019’s Changeland, Culkin’s friendship with actor and director Seth Green got him the role without having to read lines. It also meant he was exempt from promoting the film, which is what has kept him away from exploring other projects. “Doing junkets and things—that stuff always drove me crazy,” says Culkin.[video_embed id='5990183384001']RELATED: Macaulay Culkin opened up about his friendship with Michael Jackson[/video_embed]Changeland not only marked one of Culkin’s few acting roles in adulthood, it also introduced him to his co-star and now girlfriend, Brenda Song. Pulling back the curtain on his personal life, Culkin says the couple are trying to get pregnant. “We’re figuring it out, making the timing work. Because nothing turns you on more than when your lady comes into the room and says, ‘Honey, I’m ovulating.’”If Culkin and Song do have children, there’s a good chance the pair of child actors will be avoiding film sets with their offspring. Speaking about his meteoric rise during adolescence, Culkin says he enjoyed the success and the community on movie sets at first, but eventually it became too much. “It started feeling like a chore. I started vocalizing that and not being heard: I was saying, ‘I wanna go to school—I haven’t done a full year of school since first grade.’”Culkin’s parents famously engaged in a bitter separation during the actor’s teen years and his $15 - $20 million trust fund was at stake. Eventually, Culkin took legal steps to protect the fund, but the tabloids reported the story very differently. “It’s always misconstrued, that I ‘emancipated’ myself from my parents. 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 fucking pinkie in the pie. But the next thing you know, the story was that I divorced my parents. I just thought I was doing it cleanly—taking my father’s name off, taking my mom’s name off, so my opinion is unbiased. And when I did that, the whole thing kinda ended a lot faster.”
His self-awareness is evident throughout the article, especially when Culkin discusses the public perception of him. “People assume that I’m crazy, or a kook, or damaged. Weird. Cracked. And up until the last year or two, I haven’t really put myself out there at all. So, I can understand that. It’s also like, Okay, everybody, stop acting so freaking shocked that I’m relatively well-adjusted,” says Culkin. “Look: I’m a pretty peerless person. If I was an accountant, I could look left and right, and there’s other accountants sitting next to me in the office. It’s not like that,” says Culkin, who jokes that he is in fact a snowflake. His incredible success at such a young age put him into a category of his own, which is why his friendship with Michael Jackson flourished.Culkin maintains his stance that Jackson never behaved inappropriately with him and that he never saw Jackson abuse another child in any way. While speaking to Esquire, Culkin talked about seeing actor James Franco on a flight shortly after the release of HBO’s Leaving Neverland documentary. “He goes, ‘So, that documentary!’ And that was all he said. I was like, ‘Uh-huh.’ Silence. So then he goes, ‘So what do you think?’ And I turned to him and I go, ‘Do you wanna talk about your dead friend?’ And he sheepishly went, ‘No, I don’t.’ So I said, ‘Cool, man, it was nice to see you.’”Not weird, very loving, and a man of his word, Culkin is currently in the process of changing his middle name after fans cast their vote on his website. Coming in first place with 61,000 votes was Macaulay Culkin, which will make his name Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin. “There’s a lot of hoops you gotta jump through. I have a high-powered, high-priced attorney all over it, and he goes, ‘It’s not as easy as you’d think.’ But yeah, no, it’s happening. This gag is like a year old. I gotta do this,” laughs Culkin. Okay, so a little weird, but in a fun way.[video_embed id='-1']Before you go: Dash cam captures the moment of tree falling onto vehicle[/video_embed]
