Macaulay Culkin could have starred in a classic high school movie — but he was too busy going to actual high school.
The Home Alone star discussed his hiatus from acting, which lasted from 1994 to 2003, during an interview with Sean Evans on Hot Ones. “I went to high school, I got married way too young, things like that,” Culkin said, referring to his short-lived marriage to Rachel Miner that lasted from 1998 to 2002.
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During his hiatus, however, Culkin said that he was still “pretty good at reading” scripts for projects that he was offered — and he retroactively realized that one that he overlooked would have presented a great opportunity.
“I was kind of voraciously reading through the scripts, but there was a couple that slipped through,” he recalled. “And I remember about two years later kinda clearing out the house and throwing out the old scripts, and I saw that the one that I didn’t read was Rushmore. And I was like, ‘Oh, dang. I probably could have done that one.'”
Rushmore, which centered on an ambitious young prep school student with a debilitating crush on a teacher, was Wes Anderson’s sophomore feature, and launched its young lead, Jason Schwartzman, to critical acclaim. It also marked a key moment in Bill Murray’s career as he pivoted from mainstream comedies to more auteur-driven independent dramedies, and earned the Ghostbusters star an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actor as well as a Golden Globe nomination.
Culkin clarified that he wouldn’t want to see Schwartzman robbed of the lead role. “I mean, I can’t imagine anyone but Schwartzman doing that part,” he said. “But at the same time — oh, man, that would have been a ball and a biscuit, that one.”
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The Richie Rich star had previously briefly mentioned missing out on Rushmore in a 2018 Reddit AMA. “That’s a perfect movie,” he said of the film.
Schwartzman and Culkin briefly costarred in a 2022 episode of The Righteous Gemstones. The Asteroid City star also acted alongside Culkin’s fiancée, Brenda Song, in 2024’s The Last Showgirl.
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Schwartzman also shares character DNA with Culkin’s brother, Kieran Culkin, through their respective roles in The Hunger Games franchise. The Bored to Death star portrayed commentator Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman in the 2023 prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, while the Succession actor will play that character’s grandson, Caesar Flickerman, in the upcoming Sunrise on the Reaping. (Stanley Tucci played an older version of Caesar in the first four Hunger Games movies.)
Macaulay Culkin recently made a surprise cameo in an episode of Running Point, the basketball comedy that stars Song as a regular cast member. He’s also set to appear in season 2 of Fallout.
