On Monday, January 15, Kieran Culkin took home an Emmy Award. But the day before, on Sunday, it received the Critics Choice. And a week before that, the Golden Globe. And there are the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the People's Choice Awards and the Hollywood Critics Association. He is nominated for everyone. After more than 30 years in films, theaters, series and dubbings and also in the public eye, it seems incredible that Culkin's career (New York, 41 years old) is starting to take off, grabbing critics by the lapels and making the breakthrough Audience laughs and cries. Let them recognize you by your face and your name and know who you are. Kieran. Not Rory. And of course not Macaulay either. The center of a family of seven brothers who grew up as actors (for pleasure or under compulsion) and in which he, the middle one, crowns himself thanks to years of effort and a role: that of Roman Roy, the unbearable and rude. youngest son of Logan Roy (Brian Cox) in the series Succession, which ended its four seasons in a crescendo that ended in a thrilling way. Now too, during awards season. And it changed Culkin's life, too.
He, who played his first role as his brother's brother – he was Fuller, the youngest of the McCallisters, when Macaulay, 43, triumphed in 1990's Home Alone – was not at all clear about what he wanted as an actor did. He was never very interested, unlike Rory right after him, an acting talent who always liked the cameras, or Dakota, who chose production until her death 14 years ago. It wasn't until Succession realized that this was exactly what he wanted. “I think it was at the end of the first season,” he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter a few years ago. “I remember coming home and thinking, ‘This is what I want to do with my life, I want to be an actor.’ Let’s see, he was 36 years old. I made it 30″ long. He also found friends there: J. Smith-Cameron (family counselor Gerri Kellman), whom he had known for years; and especially Sarah Snook, who played her sister Shiv and almost became another sister off-screen. Their strong bond is evident at all the award ceremonies where they kiss, congratulate and thank each other for the award.
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But she's not the only one taking away her good words. At the Globes and Emmys, Kieran delivered messages of gratitude for three other women. First, for one of those who knows him best: Emily Gerson Saines, who has been the Culkin's agent for three decades. In an interview with Vanity Fair, she said that “Kieran wasn't particularly into acting for a while”: “Neither Macaulay nor Kieran chose.” “They chose it for themselves.” “I think no one can live their lives understand better than them. They have common experiences that cannot be explained to people. I don't think any of them think or behave like actors.” Then for his wife of over ten years, the British Jazz Charton, who was working in the music department of an advertising agency when they met twelve years ago met in a bar in New York and with whom he has two children (and wants more). , as he made clear at the Emmys). And finally for his mother Patricia Brentrup, 69, who is in a bad phase of health, as it became known days later. “Thank you to my mother, who gave me life, and for my childhood, which was wonderful,” said the actor on Monday evening, close to tears.
Brentrup lives on a ranch in Montana with her husband of 12 years, Mart Cox. In the mid-1990s, she separated from the children's father, Kit Culkin (whom she never married). The family lived in New York and gave birth every few years in their tiny apartment, a studio in northern Manhattan. She took care of the house and the children and worked in the evenings as a telephone operator for a theater casting agency, while he took that job – in addition to his job as a sexton on the Upper East Side, which gave his children a free Catholic education from everyone to the children to the auditions and from there to Hollywood, where he became a hated figure. Some of the couple's friends ran a small theater in Manhattan, and when they needed a child, Kit would appear with one or the other, depending on age and gender. School was secondary. “They were so poor that I had to give my money to make sure Macaulay came and went to rehearsals,” casting director Billy Hopkins recalled in a 2001 interview with New York Magazine. “I crawled under the theater seats and looked for the change that the audience dropped from their pockets.”
Macaulay Culkin hugs his little brother Kieran Culkin at the American Comedy Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California in March 1991. Ron Galella (Getty Images)
And yes, Macaulay managed to get the family out of the bunk beds in the shack next to the subway tracks and give the others wings with his success. The third of the brothers – Christian, Dakota, Macaulay, Kieran, Rory, Shane and Quinn; In addition, Kit had an eldest daughter, Jennifer, born in 1970, who grew up in the west of the country and died of an overdose in 2000 – she achieved wealth accompanied by a fame that she never wanted and which she denies to this day. “I knew my life was unique, but it wasn't until I got older that I understood exactly how unique. We were another family on the block and suddenly the way even the neighborhood kids treated us changed drastically. That's why we've always protected each other,” he said in Vanity Fair in 2018. “We are pretty unique because of our experiences. We can't look around and find someone with a similar upbringing. “It helped us be more united.” “Poor boy, damn it,” his brother Kieran commented about Macaulay in a recent interview with Esquire. “I was small and had to accept that level of fame,” he reflected. “I remember even as a kid thinking: This sucks for him.” Today, with a podcast, his band The Pizza Underground and two young children, Macaulay happily describes himself as “basically a pensioner in his 30s.”
Kieran's experience is almost the opposite of his brother's. His small appearance in Home Alone led to a starring role in the two episodes of Father of the Bride (1991 and 1995), although with controlled fame; From then on it was one title per year. In 1999 he ended his childhood with The Cider House Rules; In 2002, his youth began with “The Great Fall of Igby.” By the age of 18, he had become independent, and his mother helped him furnish and purchase pans for the rented apartment in Manhattan's East Village, where he lived until a few years ago, when his youngest son was born and They moved there to Brooklyn, although it continues to be used as a studio and rehearsal space. And Patricia was in Brooklyn with her young grandchildren for a few months helping her son.
After receiving an Emmy, actor Kieran Culkin and his wife Jazz Charton attend a party on January 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. ALLISON DINNER (EFE)
Beyond Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), his career consisted of supporting roles and voiceovers. Until the successor came. He was asked to play Cousin Greg, but from the first moment he knew it had to be Roman. He recorded three scenes and sent them to the show's creator, Jesse Armstrong, with whom he totally connected and signed him immediately. He never attended acting school or followed any method. “It was about doing it, keeping going and going! “I have a career!” he commented in Vanity Fair.
But it was 30 years earlier when fame changed the lives of all the Culkins. Kit, an actor in his youth, began to care about his children's careers and struggled with studio executives who, in addition to his poor hygiene and body odor, were concerned about the control he exercised over the children, his tyranny, his Complained about threats and his bad manners. which even the press of the time echoed. Macaulay now accuses him of physical and psychological abuse and accuses him of being “jealous” of him, as he said on his podcast: “Everything he tried to do in life, I have more than achieved by the age of ten.” That's why he stopped when he made “Rich Boy” in 1994. He refused to continue being a money-making machine. The trial for custody of him, which his mother had applied for and won, remained in the annals.
Kieran and Macaulay Culkin in 2005, at a party in New York after the premiere of a play. Bruce Glikas (Getty Images)
Kieran, for his part, sees it from a more distant perspective. He never had a good relationship with his father, but does not see him as a perpetrator. “He's not a good guy, but he hasn't been important in my life since I was 15,” he reviewed in an interview, recalling how Kit left home for a few weeks sometime in the 1990s with no one after him asked . “The truth is, nobody cared. My mother was the mother and when he wasn't there everything was better.” “He wasn't a good person and probably not a good father either,” he said. The boys, now grown, have no relationship with their father, who suffered a heart attack a decade ago that affected his speech and movements. It was around this time that Kieran saw him for the last time: in 2014, Kit visited him at the Broadway theater, he put him on the guest list and then they greeted each other backstage. No more. “Fuck him. “I don’t care,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Despite the whirlwind of early fame (“That's not a good thing at all,” Kieran has commented, “I stick with personal happiness over success, of course; if I'm miserable, then what the hell is that?”), the Culkins are still together. On December 1st, Macaulay received his star on the Walk of Fame. His partner, actress Brenda Song, his children and brothers Rory and Quinn accompanied him, as did his goddaughter Paris Jackson. His mother was unable to travel from Montana for health reasons.
The main cast of “Succession” at the Emmy Gala on January 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Left to right: Alan Ruck, Sarah Snook, Alexander Skarsgard, Brian Cox, Nicholas Braun, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Macfadyen and J. Smith-Cameron. CAROLINE BREHMAN (EFE)
There's only one thing missing from the Culkins' lives: Dakota. The second of the brothers died in December 2008 at the age of 30. She was leaving a bar in Marina del Rey, south of Los Angeles, California, when she was hit by a car. The driver had not been drinking or taking drugs; She was in rehab for her alcoholism. The family was devastated and canceled their projects. “It was the worst thing that ever happened, you can't sugarcoat it,” Culkin admitted. “Everyone handled it differently. “I think we've all turned ourselves upside down.” Even though it's been more than 15 years, Kieran knows the wound will never heal: “It will always be devastating. I still cry without meaning to. Something funny he did comes to mind and makes me laugh, and then I start to cry. Sometimes it's the realization that she will never meet my children and that they will never have her; It's hard to describe what it was like.
Because Kieran is doing his dream job and it's not that of an actor who will give him successor awards or get him into theaters in a few days with his new film “A Real Pain” with Jesse Eisenberg. It's about being able to be home and with your children. “I feel like my goal is to be a stay-at-home dad,” he told Esquire a few months ago. “That’s where I feel the most. And anything that gets me out of it is wrong.” For the Culkins, family has come first for 30 years.