Rosario Monachino
Macaulay Culkin has recalled a ‘weird’ call he received from Michael Jackson asking him to come round to his house when he was 10 years old.
The Home Alone star, 43, was one of the biggest child actors in the 90s and he’s appeared in films such as Richie Rich and My Girl.
While Jackson is known as the King of Pop and is known for some of the biggest songs of all time, including ‘Thriller’, ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘Smooth Criminal’.
Culkin has now opened up about the friendship he had with the late singer, who passed away in 2009 aged 50.
Watch this footage of Macaulay Culkin and Michael Jackson below…
The pair famously had a close friendship – with Jackson taking Culkin under his wing as he understood the pressure and difficulties that come with being a child star.
Culkin even ended up starring in the music video for ‘Black and White’.
They reportedly met for the first time when the ‘Beat It’ singer watched the child star in a theatre production of The Nutcracker in New York.
During an interview with Larry King, Culkin described it as being a brief encounter.
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“I’d actually met him once before when I was doing The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, I was playing Fritz, and he came backstage one day and I actually met him very briefly,” The Good Son star says.
“And he kind of recognised me because it was after I’d done Uncle Buck.”
In another interview, Culkin also recalls how Jackson randomly rang him, asking if he wanted to visit his residence in Neverland Ranch – which the actor said was ‘weird’.
He claims: “Yeah, he reached out to me, because a lot of things were happening like, you know, big and fast with me, and I think yes, I think yeah he identified with that.
“And then he calls me up kind of out of the blue, it’s kind of just this weird, random thing. He was like, ‘Why don’t you come over to my house?’.”
The actor said they got along so well and that he wasn’t phased by Jackson’s status as a pop star, claiming that he was a family friend.
Jackson was accused of abuse by a number of children who stayed with him at Neverland.
But the Getting Even With Dad actor has continuously defended his late friend and has insisted that nothing happened between the two – adding that all they did was ‘play video games and [hang out] in the amusement park’.
Culkin speaks out even further about their friendship on Marc Maron’s podcast WTF.
He claims: “Seriously, he was like my best friend for a good long stretch. It was a legitimate friendship.
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“I never felt uncomfortable, that was the way that he was, down to his bone marrow.
“It never felt weird. It was just the way that it was. I looked at him for who he was.
“At that point, I was pretty famous and I met plenty of famous people, his fame did not make a thing. I was not enamoured by him.”
Culkin and Jackson shared similar life experiences – aside from being child stars – as they both suffered problematic childhoods.
Jackson was allegedly abused by his father while Culkin was legally restrained from power by his parents at 14 after they tried to get control of his $17m fortune.
However, he legally removed his parents’ names from his trust fund, as per Esquire, and hired someone to look after his money.
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