Kieran Culkin Reveals Mom’s Sad Reaction to Hollywood Success

Kieran Culkin has revealed his mother Patricia Brentrup‘s bittersweet reaction to her family’s Hollywood success.

“My mom used to say when I was a kid, ‘How come whenever there’s a script about a dysfunctional family they always come to us?’” Kieran, 42, told Entertainment Weekly while walking the Screen Actors Guild Awards red carpet on Sunday, February 23.

Kieran, his older brother Macaulay Culkin, 44, and their younger sibling Rory Culkin, 35, were three of the most prolific child actors of the 1990s, with their father, Kit Culkin, 80, personally managing all three of their careers. Kit and Patricia had seven children in total but were never legally married.

Reflecting on his childhood on the SAG Awards red carpet, Kieran said his depiction of family dysfunction in awards season contender A Real Pain reminded him of his own complicated family dynamic.

“What’s a functional family?” he joked. “Aren’t they all [dysfunctional]?”

Kieran’s older brother Macaulay notably broke away from his father Kit’s management after his parents split during his teenage years. A nasty custody battle ensued, where Macaulay sought to block both parents from controlling his trust fund.

“It’s always misconstrued, that I ‘emancipated’ myself from my parents,” he told Esquire in 2020. “I legally took my parents’ names off of my trust fund and found an executor, someone who would look over my finances, just in case anyone wanted to stick their f—king pinkie in the pie. But the next thing you know, the story was that I divorced my parents. I just thought I was doing it cleanly – taking my father’s name off, taking my mom’s name off, so my opinion is unbiased. And when I did that, the whole thing kinda ended a lot faster.”

The Home Alone actor suggested in 2020 that, despite working from an early age and enduring his parents’ messy split, his childhood “coulda been worse.”

“I wasn’t working in a coal mine. I wasn’t a child soldier,” he quipped. “My father was not sexually abusing me. Certain f—ed-up things happened, but f—ed-up things happen to kids all the time and they don’t come out the other end. I’ve got something to show for it, man. I mean, look at me: I got money, I got fame, I got a beautiful girlfriend and a beautiful house and beautiful animals. It took me a long time to get to that place, and I had to have that conversation with myself and go, like, ‘Honestly, Mack? It’s not so bad.’ I want for nothing and need for even less. I’m good, man.”

In December 2024, Kieran laughed off the suggestion of having family therapy, telling The Guardian: “Us siblings, we’re already cooked, we’re baked. My godfather has this thing, he goes: ‘I will fully indulge anybody that wants to complain about their upbringing and childhood. I want to hear everything about that. And you can completely blame your parents for everything until you’re 30, and then figure s— out.’ He’s oversimplifying it, but I like that.”

While the Culkin boys’ relationship with their father has been strained in adulthood, Kieran said last December that he has immense respect for his mother’s sacrifices.

“If I wanted chocolate milk light, but my brother wanted more chocolate, and my sister wanted hardly any, she would make it those different ways. I love that s—,” he said at the time. “How did my mom do it? Yeah. And I have no idea … So, [she dealt with] 15 to 20 kids in the house [when friends were over]. I can’t believe I’m back at the grocery store sometimes three times a day. My mom had to do it on coupons. She would get cheap liver at Key Food, two giant gallons of milk, all that. For me, getting them to sleep is enough.”

Kieran’s performance in A Real Pain has been one of the surprise hits during awards season, as he most recently won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Male Actor in a Supporting Role on Sunday and previously took home a Golden Globe for the role.

Next up is the Academy Awards on March 2, where Kieran has earned his first-ever Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category.