Chris Columbus and his team had caught lightning in a bottle when they cast Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint in the first Harry Potter movie, but what’s crazy is that his decision for choosing the main trio was highly influenced by his experience with another big child actor—Macaulay Culkin.
As it turns out, it was Culkin’s troubled home life after he got famous that influenced Columbus to change their approach when it came time to cast someone as Harry Potter. Talking to Demi Lovato’s documentary Child Star (via EW), Columbus explains how they made the mistake of not looking into the Culkin family before they launched Macaulay into mega-stardom.
Columbus said:
“Once we wrapped, I didn’t know what was going on [with Culkin… We didn’t know that much about the [Culkin] family at the beginning; as we were shooting, we learned a little more. The stories are hair-raising. I was casting a kid who truly had a troubled family life.”
After his success with Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin’s personal life had started to slowly unravel to the public, with reports of his substance abuse, and his messy relationship with his father and then-manager Kit Culkin. Word was going around about Kit being abusive and even threatening Macaulay while he was working.
There’s also the case of the parents fighting for custody and control over the $50 million fortune that Macaulay had amassed.
With Columbus predicting that the fame that the Potter franchise would bring would come with intense pressure, they made sure to vet the parents of the actors as well to make sure that they were going to provide a stable home for the kids off camera.
“Suddenly, I realized that parents had to be a big part of it. I can’t have [an actor] go home to a really sort of shaky environment for the sake of a film. It’s not worth it. It was as important to cast the parents as it was to cast the kids,” said Columbus
For now Culkin still makes small appearances on TV here and there, but his situation (and the situation of many other child actors) has influenced changes in policy that put in place safeguards for kids who become child stars and start earning the money for the family.
Hulu’s Child Star with Demi Lovato looks into this, and you can check out that documentary now.
In the meantime, casting for the new Harry is underway, and production is expected to start sometime next year.
