Macaulay Culkin has revealed that he owes his actress mother Catherine O’Hara an “unpaid debt” following her death in January.
“When Catherine passed away in January, it hit me hard. It hit me so hard because it happened so soon,” the actor told Gentleman’s Journal in a recent interview.
“And I felt like I still had unfinished business,” he continued. “I do feel like I had some unfinished business with her, don’t you?”
“I felt like I owed her,” said Culkin, now 45. “I don’t like having unpaid debts.”
O’Hara, who played Culkin’s on-screen mother Kate McCallister opposite Culkin’s mischievous Kevin McCallister in Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2 (1992), died on January 30 at her home in Los Angeles after a brief illness. She was 71 years old.
At the time, Culkin paid tribute to her with an emotional eulogy on social media.
“Mom, I knew there was still time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in the chair next to you. I could hear your voice,” she wrote, alongside a photo of the two hugging in the original film and a photo of them at the 2023 Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony.
In the heartbreaking upload, he added, “But there was so much more I wanted to say. I love you. See you again.”
O’Hara has been in the spotlight since her husband, played by John Heard, Culkin’s on-screen father, died of a sudden heart attack in 2017 at the age of 71.
During Culkin’s induction into the Walk of Fame, the late “Beetlejuice” actress echoed Culkin’s love, saying, “Macaulay Culkin is the reason audiences around the world can’t go through a year without watching and loving ‘Home Alone’ together.”
“Yes, yes, he had a very good script and a great director, but it was Macaulay’s perfect performance as Kevin McCallister that gave these little boys such an extraordinary adventure,” she exclaimed at the time.
He added: “Macaulay, your sense of humor is a reflection of a child’s intelligence and is the key to surviving life at any age. And as I see it, you’ve brought a sweet, twisted, yet completely relatable sense of humor to everything you’ve decided to do since Home Alone.”
O’Hara sarcastically said at the ceremony: “Thank you for allowing me, the false mother who left you home alone more than once, to be a part of this happy occasion. I am so proud of you.”
