Macaulay Culkin took the names of his mum and dad off a trust fund that held the millions he’d made as a child star.
Culkin was one of the biggest stars of the 1990s, racking up loads of high-profile appearances as a child star.
He started out with two massive performances in the first two Home Alone films before starring in a heap of other family films like My Girl, The Good Son, The Nutcracker, Getting Even with Dad, The Pagemaster and – of course – Ritchie Rich.
As you can probably imagine, by the end of that he’d racked up the sort of fortune that most adults would be content with before he was even a teenager.
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He decided to take a break from acting in 1994 after that run, and he could certainly afford to.
However, the money he’d earned was placed into a trust fund that eventually became the subject of some dispute.
During Culkin’s teenage years, his parents Kit Culkin and Patricia Brentrup split up, leading to an acrimonious battle for custody of the seven children, which also involved Macaulay’s fortune, reported to be between $15 and 20 million.
What’s more, Culkin has said that he and his siblings didn’t want to end up with their father, who he has accused of being ‘physically and mentally’ abusive to him.
So, when the fortune and custody battle was raging, he admits that ‘we [he and his siblings] didn’t want to go with my father’.
In removing his parents from the trust fund, he just thought that he might have moved the situation along, but ended up being accused of ‘divorcing’ his parents.
Culkin maintains that isn’t the case, giving an interview to Esquire in 2018 in which he said: “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 f**king 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.”
Things did eventually work out, but Culkin has been estranged from his father since then.
Of his father’s alleged abuse, Culkin added: “Look, I mean, it sucks. But: It coulda been worse, you know?
“I wasn’t working in a coal mine. I wasn’t a child soldier. My father was not sexually abusing me.
“Certain f**ked up things happened, but f**ked up things happen to kids all the time and they don’t come out the other end.
“I’ve got something to show for it, man. I mean, look at me: I got money, I got fame, I got a beautiful girlfriend and a beautiful house and beautiful animals.
“It took me a long time to get to that place, and I had to have that conversation with myself and go, like, Honestly, Mack? It’s not so bad.
“I want for nothing and need for even less. I’m good, man.”
Topics: TV and Film, Macaulay Culkin, Home Alone, Celebrity, Money
Tom Wood