For the last decade, the adult version of one-time “Home Alone” star Macaulay Culkin has occasionally turned up in tabloid stories looking haggard and raising concerns that he’s a drug-addled, broken-down former child star.
But that couldn‘t be further from the truth, as Culkin explains in a new interview with Marc Maron. In fact, as the 37-year-old tells the comedian for his WTF podcast, he’s leading an enviable expat life in Paris, where he’s surviving off the millions he earned as the star of the “Home Alone” movies and other blockbusters of the early 1990s.
“I’m a retired 30-something, walking around with a baguette tucked under my arm, living the romantic life,” said Culkin, adding that in Paris, he gets to “live well, drink well, smoke well.”
Speaking of Michael Jackson, Culkin said the singer reached out to him soon after his success with “Home Alone.” He never doubted that his intentions were good — to share his experience of living in the spotlight at a young age. Culkin often hung out with him at the “Thriller” singer’s Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County.
“Seriously, he was like my best friend for a good long stretch,” Culkin told Maron, adding, “It was a legitimate friendship.”
Culkin acknowledged that one could get “all psychological” about Jackson’s interest in hanging out with a boy 20 years his junior, imagining he was trying to enjoy the childhood he never had.
Jackson was accused by by two different boys in 1993 and in 2003 of molestation. Jackson was never charged in the first boy’s case, and was acquitted when tried in connection with the second boy’s allegations.
“Honestly, it never struck me as odd,” Culkin told Maron about Jackson’s interest, adding that he’s still very close to Jackson’s daughter Paris Jackson. “I never felt uncomfortable.”
