“When he was a child, he almost never heard the word ‘proud.’”
Macaulay Culkin was just 10 when Home Alone made him one of the world’s most famous children. But behind that fame was a childhood marked by pressure, constant work, and a complicated family relationship that over the years led him to distance himself from Hollywood.
Today, now a father with Brenda Song, he tries to raise his children in a very different way. He said that in his home there is a word he repeats often precisely because he feels he lacked it when he was little: “proud”.
For Culkin, telling his children that he is proud of them is no minor detail. It is a way of giving them something he himself needed to hear more often as he was growing up.
After spending his childhood seeking approval in front of millions, he now wants his children to find it first within their own home.