Home Alone star Catherine O’Hara previously opened up about one line from the movie that she struggled to say to Macaulay Culkin
Home Alone star Catherine O’Hara once admitted she struggled to say one specific ‘horrific’ line to Macaulay Culkin while on set.
The Schitt’s Creek actor starred in the 1990 festive film as Kate McCallister, the mother of Macaulay’s character, Kevin. In the iconic movie, which was directed by Chris Columbus, Kevin was accidentally left behind at home when his family left to go on holiday for the Christmas season.
Near the beginning of the film, he has a row with his family right before they’re leaving for Paris. Kate sends Kevin to the attic to sleep for the night as punishment. She tells him she doesn’t want to see him “for the rest of the night”, with Kevin replying: “I don’t want to see you again for the rest of my life, and I don’t want to see anybody else, either.”
His mum answers: “I hope you don’t mean that – you’d feel pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you didn’t have a family.” Catherine admitted she struggled saying that line to Macaulay and said it almost ‘killed her’ to do so.
Speaking at a ceremony unveiling his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, she said: “The scene where I had to drag him upstairs to sleep in the attic ‘cause he’d misbehaved, he’s mouthing off about the family and I say, ‘Well, you’d be pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you had no family,’ and he says, ‘No, I wouldn’t.’
“And I was supposed to say, ‘Then say it again – maybe it’ll happen.’ I can’t tell you how much that killed me – I could not wrap my head around saying something so horrific to this beautiful child. Of course, I was not yet a mother at the time and I had no idea the kind of things would come out of my own mouth with my own two sons.”
She went on to praise Macaulay, who was only 10 years old when he was in the popular movie. Catherine said: “This beautiful 10-year-old little boy was called a superstar, a moneymaker, one of the hottest leading young men in Hollywood by the world over. How does anyone survive that? I believe you’d have to possess a certain quality, a gift, that dear John Hughes obviously recognized in you Macaulay, your sense of humour.
“It’s a sign of intelligence in a child and a key to surviving life at any age. From what I see, you have brought that sense of sweet yet twisted, yet totally relatable, sense of humour to everything you have chosen to do since Home Alone.”
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