Macaulay Culkin

There's more to me, you know? I'm not Macaulay Culkin, 'Home Alone' kid. I'm Macaulay Culkin... actor.

I have a lot of growing up to do, or a lot of growing down. I think that's probably more appropriate.

I have no control over people's perceptions of me at all and that's one of the things I decided very early on is that I can't control the way other people think of me. All I can do, especially when it comes to my career is go out there and do cool unique kinds of things.

Gosh, I couldn't even talk right until I was about 6 years old or something like that.

I can go to any restaurant without a reservation, but while I'm there, everyone's gonna be staring.

A lot of people meet me and they're like, 'Why aren't you crazy?'

I don't even know how to define myself. I'm a person who writes. It's something I enjoy, and hopefully people enjoy it as well.

I enjoy my life. I think I have a very good life. And I think I'm very satisfied with the direction of my career and just my lifestyle and everything like that. So I wouldn't change a single thing.

I get carded for soda, you know, when I go to the supermarket. I mean, they card me for everything. You know, I can't even get through a hand of black jack without getting carded, like, five times.

I've always said that acting found me. I didn't really find it.

Math is one of my favorite subjects.

I've led a very isolated existence since I was 6 years old. It's kind of been me and my mind.

I lead a simple life. I feed the fish. I walk the dogs. I cook dinner. Occasionally I take a meeting.

I'm not one of those people who needs that gratification of doing, like, 10 films a year.

People do bad things in their lives. And those sort of things are forgivable. That's half the point of having confession in church - you need to be able to fess up to what you've done.

After seeing 'Big,' I wanted an elevator that opened directly into my apartment, just like Tom Hanks did.

I'd made enough money by the time I was 12 to never have to work again.

If I find cool, open-minded people, want to do unique one-of-a-kind kind of project, I'll do it as long as I can.

As a senior in high school, you figure out what you want to do with your life. I asked myself if I wanted to get back into acting and thought: 'Yes, but under my own terms and nothing like it was before.'

It drives me crazy when your parents try to read your mind. It's even worse when they try to read your mail.

All the child-star cliches, I've tried very hard to avoid them all.

I felt like I had two fathers. I had my real father and the father in my head.

It took me ten minutes to write this very sentence. I'm no writer. This is not my calling.

Sometimes I feel like I have a dozen different people inside of me. I've always been that way, and I've always written stuff down.

Much like anyone with too much time on his or her hands, I feel as though I am the most important person on earth and everything I do is relevant. I say the most charming and inspired things when no one is around.

I do have a family, and I do have friends, and so-called friends, and acquaintances, and many other people I see only around Christmas time. Maybe they could vouch for me. Maybe they could testify to my existence and save a part of me that thinks I'm no better than a bag of potato chips.

If an alien race lands on the planet Earth tomorrow and asks me to prove I'm really here, what do I do? What do I give them? What do I tell them? What do I show them? I can't sing or dance. I can't paint. I've never built anything, and I've never contributed anything significant to the human race.

I hope I'm remembered as the king of the world, the noble man who united all the nations of the earth. But that probably won't happen.

I could have gone the route of a lot of these former child actors, but I didn't want that for myself. Like I said, when I was 14 years old, I decided to quit. I didn't ever want to do it again.

I went to high school, which was a good thing because I hadn't interacted with many people my age, and I didn't really have friends. I had a million acquaintances and no friends.

Michael Jackson and I talk all the time. I think we understand each other in a way that most people can't understand either of us.

I'd made enough made money by the time I was 12 to never work again, so it's not about a big pay check with me.

I try not to label myself anything, really, but you know, I'm definitely an indoorsy person, and I definitely kind of just try to, you know, stay away from life in the public eye, at least.

It's like, I don't think you understand, Michael Jackson's bedroom is two stories and it has, like, three bathrooms and this and that. So, when I slept in his bedroom, yes, but you understand the whole scenario.

It's a place where I could do something on a weekly basis and see if I like it.

I remember sitting one time doing 100 interviews in a day, and they're all television interviews and they're kind of - and you just sit there and they bring these people in and out, and in out.

I hope people don't think I'm crazy, because I'm not.

Oh wow, you know what's wrong with all these families on TV? All these kids say stuff no kid would say. Stuff grown-ups want them to say. Man, I'd make a really realistic family. Where kids get spankings. On TV parents say, 'Oh, you shouldn't do that ever again. Now you can have ice cream.' Forget it.

They put it on the page because it sounded good or it looked good or they read it in a book somewhere that this is how you structure a script or something, and they just don't get it. It's surprising.

Most of the offers I get from Hollywood are for teen comedies. My manager thinks I'm crazy for turning down all that money, but I'm very picky.

Because of what I did when I was 10 years old, I'm not living from paycheck to paycheck, and I can do things because I want to do them.

He was so excited. He cut out pictures of these landscapes and neighborhoods and kind of really tried to give you a feel of the movie. It was kind of cute but at the same time it really showed his enthusiasm for it.

I am a collection of thoughts and memories and likes and dislikes. I am the things that have happened to me and the sum of everything I've ever done. I am the clothes I wear on my back. I am every place and every person and every object I have ever come across. I am a bag of bones stuck to a very large rock spinning a thousand miles an hour.

I did 14 movies in six years, I had a cartoon TV show, and I don't want to do that again. I just want to make unique pieces of art. That's why I quit everything when I was 14 and sat around for eight years before I did another movie.

I don't mind if somebody comes up to me and shakes my hand, but if I'm in the middle of a restaurant and somebody asks me for a picture, I can be a jerk and say no, or I can say yes and draw more attention to myself, which is exactly the opposite of what I want.

I write a good amount. I've been gathering up a backlog of stuff and maybe I'll do something with it someday, but I don't want to talk about it just yet because that would jinx it.

I'm doing naughty things, I'm drinking too much, I'm going to clubs. It really didn't matter to me, other than the fact that some parents wouldn't let their kids hang out with me.

I'm the most out-of-work actor I know. In the last two years I've basically taken meetings for a living.

I'm not one of those actors who needs the media spotlight all the time to feel gratified. I'm happy to do one project a year and take the rest of the year off as long as that project is special.

I had all the fame anyone could want, and I ran away from it.