Throwing in the towel … kind of. Macaulay Culkin revealed he was “essentially retired” from acting in an interview with New York magazine, published on Monday, April 4.
Culkin, 35, who found fame at 10 years old thanks to his role as Kevin McCallister in the iconic 1990 film Home Alone, told the outlet that his work in Hollywood is pretty much over.
“I’m a man in his mid-30s who’s essentially retired,” the former child star said. “I kind of go where the wind takes me a little bit.”
Inevitably, of course, people still recognize him from his Home Alone days. To avoid unwanted attention, the actor likes to venture out in the middle of the night when he is less likely to be approached by fans.
“I’ll take walks at 2 or 4 in the morning,” the New York City resident said, “because there’s nobody out on the streets and it’s easy for me to go unnoticed.”
Culkin also likes to jet off to Paris whenever he gets the chance. In France, he finds it easier to feel a sense of anonymity. Although he initially thought no one knew who he was overseas, Culkin found out that wasn’t the case while visiting a Parisian café.
“A waitress just gave [a card with a tiny Home Alone–era photo of myself] to me and walked away — their WiFi code was ‘Macaulay Culkin,'” he explained. “When she came back, I said, ‘I like your WiFi code.’ She goes, ‘Thank you,’ and I say, ‘C’est moi.’ She turned white and brought over the owner of the place, who said, ‘I knew you’d come here someday.’”
“It turned out that no, they recognized me, they just didn’t care,” he added of the people in Paris. “I was like, ‘Where have you people been my entire life?’”
Since his 1991 Golden Globe nomination for playing the troublemaking McCallister, Culkin has sporadically accepted acting jobs at his leisure. Most recently, he shot an arc on The Jim Gaffigan Show, which returns to TV Land June 22. He has also signed on to indie projects such as Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling and Adam Green’s Aladdin. In December 2015, he hilariously reprised his Home Alone character in a bizarre NSFW video for a web series called :DRYVRS.
