Why Home Alone actor stepped away from movies to live new life as he makes admission

Home Alone star Daniel Stern explained why he's largely stepped away from acting and isn't participating in events to commemorate the movie's 35th anniversary.

The classic Christmas film turns 35 this year, and while it has spawned a series of sequels and a reboot, the first two are the best and there's none more iconic than the original Home Alone.

It's the traditional festive tale of how a little boy called Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) realises his family have gone on holiday without him right when a pair of robbers calling themselves 'The Wet Bandits' (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) start sizing up the house as their next target.

Naturally, Kevin does what any enterprising child would do and rigs his house with a series of traps to spring on criminal duo Harry and Marv, injuring them in a series of ways that are funny in the movies but could genuinely kill them if you tried it in real life.

Let's not even mention the level of lethality Kevin turns to in Home Alone 2, where his traps would have brutally killed Harry and Marv several times over.

Daniel Stern (right) played Marv in Home Alone (20th Century Fox)

The movies are fantastic, but if you head into cinemas these days you're unlikely to see the three main stars since Culkin quit acting for a long time before making a comeback - you'll soon be able to see him in season two of Fallout - while Pesci 'loosely retired' in 1999 and only occasionally comes back for projects like The Irishman.

Meanwhile, it sounds like Daniel Stern is living the good life as he has also cooled it on the career as he explained he 'needed' to step away from the big screen.

"I did a lot of great movies but there came a point where I missed being away from my family," Stern wrote on his website.

“I decided to stop traveling so much, stay home and focus on my family and my other artistic passions. The result of that decision is that I have a wonderful family life and this body of work."

He hasn't completely packed in acting, having been in the latest season of the Apple TV series For All Mankind, but he dedicates more time to being an artist and growing fruit on the farm he lives on.

These days Stern spends more time on his farm and says he's become a bit of a 'homebody' (Michael Tran/Getty Images)

Stern recently told People that these days he's 'a bit of a homebody', having left Hollywood for his California farm to live the good life.

He's well aware of Home Alone's enduring popularity as people will still come and tell him how much they love it, saying: "I love knowing that everybody loves it but, like, actual people come at me and say, 'We love it.' It's a little overwhelming sometimes."

Describing it as 'a gem of a movie', Stern explained that he didn't know Home Alone was going to carve out a niche as a Christmas classic, but did think it was 'the funniest script I've ever read'.

He said: "It was so funny, it was so true and so I did know that.

"I was hopeful that we were making a great movie. I had no idea obviously - no one could - of the longevity of its life."

When the time came to do Home Alone 2 he cleverly demanded a $1.5 million fee and two percent of the gross profits since he 'knew they couldn’t do the movie without me', the studio negotiated him down to one percent but it was still an extra payday of $3.59 million.

He did suffer for his art, as during the second movie he scored some serious bruises to his legs and other bits 'you know where' while filming a scene where he had to climb a tower of debris.