“It was pretty nuts. And I think what people sometimes fail to remember, too, is that he was a kid. He didn’t really choose that,” the Succession star recalled to NPR in December 2021 of his sibling’s childhood fame. “It’s something that happened to him. And I think when you’re a kid, you obviously don’t have the tools to handle something like that. So I think it might have been pretty tough.”
He added at the time: “For me, I got to sort of experience it secondhand as a child. So to me, I always have known this is not something one would want to pursue. It’s not a very nice thing, fame. No anonymity, it’s terrible.”
Macaulay got his big break playing the mischievous Kevin McCallister in 1990’s Home Alone — a film in which Kieran had a brief cameo — after a series of smaller TV and movie roles. The Uncle Buck star’s brood came along for the ride, including his parents, Kit Culkin and Patricia Brentrup, and his multiple siblings.
Kit, who is an accomplished stage actor in his own right, and Brentrup share seven children together: Macaulay, Kieran, Rory Culkin, Quinn Culkin, Shane Culkin, Christian Culkin and Dakota “Cody” Culkin, who died in 2008 at the age of 29 following a fatal car crash. Kit, who has an estranged relationship with both Macaulay and Kieran, also shared daughter Jennifer — who died in 2000 after a drug overdose — with ex-girlfriend Adeena VanWagoner.
Kieran, who rose to fame with roles in She’s All That and Father of the Bride, has since been candid about sharing the spotlight with his big brother.
“I have been on this very stage [before]. I was on an episode of SNL back when my brother Mac hosted 30 years ago, almost to the day,” the Margaret actor recalled during his Saturday Night Live hosting debut in November 2021. “I was 9 years old. I got to be in three sketches, two of which are non-problematic and, at the end of the show, I got to be on the stage for the good nights and I think we have a clip … So, there’s my brother, and the cast has lifted him up on their shoulders and, boom there I am, clearly jealous.”
He continued: “My brother’s up there, got his arms up all victorious and I’m down there on the ground, like, ‘Me, I want uppies.’ I ask Kevin Nealon to pick me up and he goes, ‘Yeah, OK, sure,’ I just start hamming it up for the cameras, you know? I don’t know what that [facial expression] was, like, a [Robert] De Niro impression?”
Macaulay, for his part, has been equally proud of his brother’s Hollywood success.
“Oh s—t! My brother is at the Golden Globes?! That is so cool,” the My Girl star — who shares two sons with fiancée Brenda Song — quipped via Twitter in January 2019 after watching red carpet coverage of Kieran with the Succession cast. “HOLY S—T KIERAN IS NOMINATED??? WHAT IS SUCCESSION?! Man, I should really answer his calls more often. Thanksgiving is going to be really awkward this year.”
Scroll below for Kieran’s candid quotes about his relationship with big brother Macaulay:
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January 2019
After the Bunny Ears founder live-tweeted Kieran’s Globes night out, the Father of the Bride Part II star had a sweet reaction.
“Oh, was he?” Kieran exclusively told Us Weekly at the HBO Golden Globes afterparty. “Oh man! I haven’t seen that. I’m on no social media, so I did not see any of that.”
He also opened up to Us about his brothers’ tireless support. “Because family. That’s easy, right? I mean, you got family,” Kieran said at the time.
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October 2021
Macaulay and Song welcomed their son Dakota, who was named after the actors’ late sister, in April 2021. However, Kieran had yet to meet his nephew by that October.
“I’m a little bit ahead on the dad thing,” he told Access Hollywood. “I’ve got a 2-year-old daughter and an 8-week-old son [with my wife, Jazz Charton], but I haven’t actually met his son yet because he lives in California and there’s been work and a pandemic and all that stuff.”
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October 2021
“He would get harassed on the street,” Kieran confessed to The Hollywood Reporter about the downsides of his brother’s childhood notoriety. “One time, a woman pulled off his hat and looked at him and said, ‘Yeah, it’s him! You’re not that cute.’ And then handed the hat back and walked away.”
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November 2021
Kieran joked during his SNL hosting debut that his variety show has been a long time coming after his brother’s 1991 gig, in which he had a cameo.
“I’ve waited 30 years to be on this stage and say, ‘We’ve got a great show for you tonight … So stick around we’ll be right back,’” he concluded his live monologue before the commercial break.
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December 2021
Kieran reflected on Macaulay’s insane level of fame during a frank NPR conversation. “Some people probably enjoy it, and they probably have been able to figure out life with it. But I think for the most part, it comes to people and they go, ‘Oh, I’ve made a horrible mistake,’ and now they have to manage it. That’s the way I look at it,” he added. “Any reasonable person would not, could not, look at fame and go, ‘I want that!’”
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March 2023
Us broke the news that the Party Monster star and the Suite Life of Zack and Cody alum had welcomed their second child together, son Carson, in late 2022.
“Well, the cousins live in Los Angeles, we live in New York,” Kieran later told Access Hollywood at the Succession season 4 premiere, explaining that he hasn’t yet met his newborn nephew. “I have a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old and as busy as I am, there is no getting on a plane and going.”
Credit: Todd Owyoung/NBC
March 2023
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Kieran joked that he “often” gets mistaken for one of his brothers.
“The one [time] that kind of blew my mind when I was about [Father of the Bride] age, I got out of a car at the airport and a woman ran up to me, she noticed me right away,” he recalled. “She ran up and was like, ‘Are you Mcluckley Mcluckley?’ I had the presence of mind to go, ‘No, nobody is. That is not somebody’s name.’”
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March 2023
“Poor f—king guy,” Kieran recalled of his big brother’s early success during an Esquire profile. “He was little and having to try to accept that level of fame as reality. Even at that time, as a kid, I remember thinking, ‘That sucks for him.’”