“Home Alone” star Macaulay Culkin returned to acting last year after a brief hiatus with a supporting role in Seth Green’s “Changeland,” but the actor had originally planned for a much higher-profile comeback courtesy of Quentin Tarantino. Culkin reveals in a new Esquire profile that he auditioned for a role in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The audition was the actor’s first in nearly a decade. Culkin would not say which role he auditioned for, but he did reveal how it went: “It was a disaster. I wouldn’t have hired me. I’m terrible at auditioning anyway, and this was my first audition in like eight years.”
Culkin has mostly stayed away from acting in recent years, especially in major studio projects like the Tarantino-directed, Sony-backed “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The actor tells Esquire the audition and his role in “Changeland” was a refreshing change of pace. “No matter how much I act like a curmudgeonly old man, it’s still fun to get back in the saddle once in a while and play around,” Culkin said. The actor also spoke about the image of himself that has been created due to his choice to stay out of the spotlight for so long.
“People assume that I’m crazy, or a kook, or damaged. Weird. Cracked,” Culkin said. “And up until the last year or two, I haven’t really put myself out there at all. So I can understand that. It’s also like, Okay, everybody, stop acting so freaking shocked that I’m relatively well-adjusted. Look: I’m a pretty peerless person. If I was an accountant, I could look left and right, and there’s other accountants sitting next to me in the office. It’s not like that. It’s one of those things where, like, the cliché that we’re all snowflakes? That we’re all unique? Well, you know what? I actually am a snowflake.”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” just won the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Brad Pitt) and Best Production Design. The movie earned a total of 10 nominations, tied with “The Irishman” and “1917” as the second most-nominated film of the 92nd Academy Awards. Should Culkin want to star in a Tarantino movie, he’ll have one more shot as Tarantino has said he is retiring from feature filmmaking after his tenth project.
Culkin has mostly stayed away from acting in recent years, especially in major studio projects like the Tarantino-directed, Sony-backed “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The actor tells Esquire the audition and his role in “Changeland” was a refreshing change of pace. “No matter how much I act like a curmudgeonly old man, it’s still fun to get back in the saddle once in a while and play around,” Culkin said. The actor also spoke about the image of himself that has been created due to his choice to stay out of the spotlight for so long.
“People assume that I’m crazy, or a kook, or damaged. Weird. Cracked,” Culkin said. “And up until the last year or two, I haven’t really put myself out there at all. So I can understand that. It’s also like, Okay, everybody, stop acting so freaking shocked that I’m relatively well-adjusted. Look: I’m a pretty peerless person. If I was an accountant, I could look left and right, and there’s other accountants sitting next to me in the office. It’s not like that. It’s one of those things where, like, the cliché that we’re all snowflakes? That we’re all unique? Well, you know what? I actually am a snowflake.”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” just won the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Brad Pitt) and Best Production Design. The movie earned a total of 10 nominations, tied with “The Irishman” and “1917” as the second most-nominated film of the 92nd Academy Awards. Should Culkin want to star in a Tarantino movie, he’ll have one more shot as Tarantino has said he is retiring from feature filmmaking after his tenth project.