The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 152

THE FATHER FROM Kit Culkin turned his son Macaulay into a Hollywood star at the age of ten. Six years later they hardly speak to each other. DERMOT PURGAVIE reports on how stardom tore a family apart HE NEWS HAD GOT around. and when Arnon Milchan walked into the restaurant of the Bel- Air Hotel in Los Angeles, he was spontaneously applauded by lunching film folk. Hollywood loves a good victim.

and Mr Milchan had just delivered a juicy one. To provoke this gushy public display of admiration. Milchan and fellow producer Robert Krasnow had dared to do what others only muttered about after the third martini. They had declined to be intimidated by the reigning 800lb gorilla of the movie business. They had defied the demands of Kit Culkin.

dreaded father of the most successful child performer in entertainment historv. Macaulay Culkin. tried to pull a power play. savs Krasnow. became outrageous and we had to shut him For Kit Culkin.

trving to elevate his son in the picture. it was a jolting defeat. And for the kid who had captivated the world with his blond. big-cared cuteness. it was the beginning of a long and chaotic melodrama whose last act is now being plaved out in the New York courts.

where the record is thick with the fierce rhetoric of expensive lawyers and the ferocious enmities of a family that has fallen apart. Six vears after he became a megastar and the biggest thing in winsomeness since Shirley Temple. the cosy story of the bov who conquered Hollywood and earned S50 million has unravelled with terrible ugliness. His never-married and now embittered parents are warring for custody of their celebrated son. and for control of his Macaulay Culkin with his parents Patricia Brentrup and Kit Culkin at the 'Home Alone' premiere in Chicago in 1990 TELFORAPH MAGAZINE 23.