Macaulay Culkin said his quality of life improved after cutting ties with his father, Kit Culkin.
The 45-year-old actor discussed the matter on the latest episode of the SmartLess podcast with hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett.
"I had a pretty acrimonious relationship with my father, famously," Culkin said at the 22:20 mark in the video linked here when asked if he still speaks to his parents, who managed his childhood career. “As soon as I was able to kind of push him out, my quality of life on a day-to-day level definitely went up."
Kit Culkin managed Macaulay during his peak years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when he starred in films like Home Alone and My Girl, before stepping away from acting at age 14.
"I was done. I was like, ‘I hope you all made your money, because there's no more coming from me.’ I made my name, I made my mark, I made my fortune," the Home Alone star added. “The only reason why I even do it now is because I like to do it. Pay, pleasure, prestige. That's the only reason to do a gig. Technically, I'm retired right now. Like, I retire and then if I find something I like, I unretire do that and I immediately retire afterward. Every gig is my last.”
"I remember when I stopped having fun. I wanted to take a break, and I said I was getting really taxed,” Macaulay said, noting that his desire to do “a semester of school” went unheard. “That was something that really affected me, and affected my work and stuff like that. And then it was just like, 'Oh, l'm on the hamster wheel and I can't get off!
“Once I had some autonomy and some agency in my life, I grabbed it with both hands," he added.
Macaulay said stepping back allowed him to experience a more typical adolescence, sharing that he "fell in love, got drunk for the first time, things like that."
"I was kind of just drifting around, and tried to figure out what I wanted out of life and so forth. I didn't find it. I wanted to explore that in a different way, on my terms," he said.
In an Instagram post shared last year, Macaulay admitted to having a “complicated relationship” with Father’s Day.
During a 2018 interview for the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, the actor characterized his father as “abusive, physically and mentally,” adding, “I can show you all my scars if I wanted to.”
The semi-retired actor has continued to appear sporadically in television and film, including voice work in Zootopia 2, a cameo in Netflix's Running Point, a six episode run on American Horror Story: Double Feature, and voice acting on Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken.
Outside of acting, Macaulay is focused on family life with his two children, Dakota and Carson, whom he shares with fiancée Brenda Song.