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Macaulay Culkin was a child star with a deeply miserable childhood. Sadly, he is far from alone.
These days, Culkin and wife Brenda Song are living happily with their young children.
But he wants nothing to do with his own father.
That man has seven children and four grandchildren … and apparently no contact with any of them.
Neither Macaulay Culkin nor his siblings want a relationship with their father
In the latest episode of Kate and Oliver Hudson’s Sibling Revelry podcast, Macaulay Culkin opened up about his — and essentially the entirety of his family’s — estrangement from his father.
Culkin has famously accused his father of mental and physical abuse. He has credited his fame as a child actor for being able to eventually escape.
Now, he describes, his family does “want anything to do with” Christopher “Kit” Culkin. And the famous former child actor himself has not spoken to his father in about 30 years. Good for him!
“He’s a man who had seven kids and now has four grandkids, and none of them want anything to do with him,” Macauley Culkin pointed out.
Like most people, Culkin noted that he would assume that “I must have done something wrong” if everyone in his family were no-contact with him. But not daddy dearest.
“I have more than an inkling that he does not feel that way,” he said of his father.
“Like we’re wrong and he’s right. He’s one of those narcissistic people.”
As a child, his parents’ divorce gave him his first path to freedom
In contrast, Culkin still has a relationship with his mother, Matricia Brentrup. He still remembers the intense custody battle between his parents.
“I wanted nothing to do with my father,” he recalled. “He was just the worst.”
Unfortunately, in our backwards legal system, children have few choices — and fewer avenues to escape the worst parents imaginable. Culkin, however, found one.
“The judge was like, well, you have to do visitations with him. I told my lawyer, ‘Yeah, I’m not doing that.’ He said, ‘Well, you’ll be in contempt of court’ and this and that,” Culkin described.
“‘Well, how about this? I dare the judge to put me in jail for not wanting to visit his abusive father,’” he recalled telling the attorney.
Culkin continued: “I actually had to double down on that. ‘I double dare him to arrest the most famous kid in the world.’ I never played that card, but that was the one time I played that card.”
Apparently, no one is still in contact with ‘Kit’ Culkin
While countless children are forced to spend time — sometimes by court order — with absolute monsters, Culkin’s “smart ass” gambit seemed to work.
The actor went on to note that his siblings also have more or less no contact with their dad — for similar reasons to his own.
“I think my older brother had some contact with him at one point,” Culkin speculated. “But I think that turned sour pretty fast again.”
Like countless abuse survivors, Macaulay Culkin emphasizes that adulthood and becoming a parent himself only reinforced his horror at his own childhood.
“Now that I got kids of my own, it makes me kick up some dust and I go, ‘I can’t believe he was like that. He had all these lovely kids,’” he reflected.
As for the psychology behind his father, Culkin speculated that the man “had a certain amount of resentment towards me. Because he wanted to be an actor. He never really got as far as chorus on Broadway, and then he did some ballet too.”
That is not the first story of a desperate wannabe entertainer whose children paid the price for their aspirations. Now, Culkin’s father is reaping what he sowed — even if he is, Culkin says, unlikely to recognize his own fault in it.
Macaulay Culkin & Siblings Want Nothing to Do With Awful Dad was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.