Macaulay Culkin could have starred in a classic high school movie — but he was too busy going to actual high school.
The Home Alone star looked back on his hiatus from acting, which lasted from 1994 to 2003, in a new interview this week.
“I went to high school, I got married way too young, things like that,” Culkin told Sean Evans on Hot Ones, referring to his short-lived marriage to Rachel Miner from 1998 until 2002.
Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty
Macaulay Culkin in January 1998
During his break from Hollywood, however, Culkin was still “pretty good” at reading scripts for projects he was offered, he says — but he did overlook one that would have presented a great opportunity.
“I was kind of voraciously reading through the scripts, but there was a couple that slipped through,” he recalled. “And I remember about two years later kinda clearing out the house and throwing out the old scripts, and I saw that the one that I didn’t read was Rushmore. And I was like, ‘Oh, dang. I probably could have done that one.'”
Rushmore, which centered on an ambitious prep school student with a debilitating crush on a teacher, was Wes Anderson’s 1998 sophomore feature, and it helped launch its young lead Jason Schwartzman’s career. It also marked a key moment for Bill Murray as he pivoted from mainstream comedies to more auteur-driven work, earning an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor as well as a Golden Globe nomination for the film.
Still, Culkin clarified that he wouldn’t want to see Schwartzman robbed of his breakout role. “I mean, I can’t imagine anyone but Schwartzman doing that part,” he said. “But at the same time — oh, man, that would have been a ball and a biscuit, that one.”
Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
Jason Schwartzman in 1998’s ‘Rushmore’
The Richie Rich star briefly mentioned missing out on Rushmore in a 2018 Reddit AMA when a fan asked him if a role ever got away. “I was sent the script to Rushmore. I was still retired then,” he said. “That’s a perfect movie.”
Schwartzman co-starred with Culkin in a 2022 episode of The Righteous Gemstones, and also acted alongside Culkin’s fiancée, Brenda Song, in 2024’s The Last Showgirl.
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Schwartzman also shares character DNA with Culkin’s brother Kieran Culkin through their respective roles in The Hunger Games franchise. The Bored to Death star portrayed commentator Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman in the 2023 prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, while the Succession Emmy winner will play that character’s grandson, Caesar Flickerman, in the upcoming Sunrise on the Reaping. (Stanley Tucci played an older version of Caesar in the first four Hunger Games movies.)
Macaulay Culkin recently made a surprise cameo in an episode of Running Point, the basketball comedy in which Song is a series regular. He’s also set to appear in season 2 of Fallout.
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