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.
Similar items
Leonardo DiCaprio
The floppy-haired heartthrob whose face covered every bedroom wall and Tiger Beat cover after Titanic. Before he was an Oscar-winning elder statesman of film, '90s Leo was pure teen-idol "Leo-mania."
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Kevin boards the wrong plane and lands in New York with his dad's bag and credit card — cue the Plaza Hotel, the pigeon lady, and traps somehow crueler than the first movie's. The rare sequel kids argued was better than the original.
Adam Sandler
The SNL goofball who became a box-office machine — Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy. In the '90s his man-child comedies and shouty voices made him one of the most bankable comedians alive.
![Video thumbnail — Rookie of the Year (1993) Theatrical Trailer [4K] [FTD-1393]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gUAoirkeaVE/maxresdefault.jpg)
Thomas Ian Nicholas
Las Vegas native who became the face of two defining family-movie fantasies—and then grew up into American Pie. From Rookie of the Year's 100-mph kid pitcher to King Arthur's time-traveling Calvin to Kevin in the American Pie gang, his roles bookend an entire decade of growing up.