Macaulay Culkin
The hands-on-cheeks scream that launched a thousand parodies. As Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, Culkin became the most famous child star on Earth — and, briefly, the highest-paid kid in Hollywood.
Macaulay Culkin, born in 1980, became a global phenomenon at age ten as Kevin McCallister in Home Alone (1990), the booby-trapping kid accidentally left behind at Christmas. The film was a runaway hit, earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and turned his aftershave-shocked face into one of the decade's defining images.
He wasn't a one-hit child star. My Girl (1991) won him an MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss, and The Good Son (1993) cast him against type as a chilling young villain. For Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) he was reportedly paid $4.5 million — up from $110,000 for the first film — cementing his status as the highest-paid child actor of the era.
After Richie Rich (1994), Culkin stepped away from acting as a teenager in search of a more normal life. He returned to occasional roles around 2000 and remained a nostalgic touchstone, receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023 — but his heyday is the tight 1990–1994 run.
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