Catherine O’Hara: Home Alone Costar Macaulay Culkin Has ‘Lovely Family’

More than three decades after they filmed Home Alone, Catherine O’Hara still has a soft spot in her heart for movie son Macaulay Culkin.

“He’s just a lovely young man,” O’Hara, 70, exclusively told Us Weekly of Culkin, 44, while promoting her Michelob ULTRA Super Bowl campaign.

The actress teased that while she played his mother, Kate McCallister, in 1990’s Home Alone, in reality she is like Culkin’s “far off relative.” (Culkin portrayed Kevin McCallister, who after being accidentally left home alone during the holidays is forced to defend his house from a pair of hilariously inept burglars, played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern.)

“I just care about him. I care for him. I care about him. I’m so happy that he’s doing so well,” O’Hara gushed.

She noted that the pair recently did a commercial together, which gave them time to catch up. “[It] is just fun to get to be around him,” O’Hara said.

The Schitt’s Creek alum added that Culkin has grown into someone she is proud to call a friend. “He’s got a lovely family, his own little family that he’s starting,” O’Hara told Us. “He is a sweet young man.” (Culkin shares two sons, Dakota, 3, and Carson, 2, with fiancée Brenda Song.)

She teased that not everything has changed since they first worked together — or since the pair reunited for the 1992 sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

“He’s still got the same face up close,” O’Hara revealed. “It’s like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m still looking at that little 8-year-old.’”

She noted that Culkin has a “great sense of humor” as well, which is why she thinks late writer John Hughes and director Chris Columbus “picked him” for the now-classic holiday films.

“He is funny. Always was,” O’Hara continued. “I just love [him]. I’m just really happy for him.”

Over the years, O’Hara and Culkin have crossed paths and remained eternally linked to the Christmas season thanks to the success of Home Alone. So it was no surprise when, in December 2023, O’Hara made an appearance at Culkin’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony.

When O’Hara spoke at the event, she jokingly referred to herself as Culkin’s “fake mom that left you home alone not once but twice.”

She then sang his praises for his charisma — a character trait that was obvious even when he was a child. “This beautiful 10-year-old little boy was called a superstar, a moneymaker, one of the hottest leading young men in Hollywood,” O’Hara said. “How does anyone survive that? I believe you’d have to possess a certain quality, a gift that dear John Hughes obviously recognized in Macaulay.”

The following year, O’Hara and Culkin shared the screen for a Chase commercial in which they poked fun at all the “Kevins” in O’Hara’s life, including Kevin Hart and the fictional Kevin McCallister.

To kick off the new year, O’Hara has taken part in another epic ad campaign, this time for Michelob ULTRA as part of Super Bowl LIX’s commercial lineup. In the commercial, O’Hara joins forces with Willem Dafoe for a game of pickleball against professional pickleballers Jaume Martinez Vich and Emily Cederquist.

The actors play coy about their own skills in hopes of winning ice-cold glasses of Michelob ULTRA. They proceed to “out-hustle” everyone on the court in the ad, which was released on Tuesday, January 28.

“I got the script and really laughed reading it. Just the very idea made me laugh,” O’Hara told Us of why she signed on for the commercial. “Then hearing that Willam was doing it. I’d worked with him very briefly on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice but didn’t really get to hang out with him much. And it was as lovely as I hoped it would be.”

With reporting by Leanne Aciz Stanton