Life and Career
Culkin was born in Manhattan, New York, the son of Marian Ethel (née Wagner), a writer and editor, and Philip Harley Culkin, a journalist. He spent his youth in New York City, working on Broadway in theater productions with actors such as Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn. He also took class at the School of American Ballet, like son Macaulay. His brother, Terry, and sisters Bonnie Bedelia and Candace, also worked in theater and television. Culkin credits his mother, who was their manager, for these early successes.
Culkin is the father of Shane (1976), Dakota (1979-2008), Macaulay (1980), Kieran (1982), Quinn (1984), Christian (1987) and Rory (1989) with Patricia Brentrup. Culkin and Brentrup were together for 21 years from 1974–1995, but never married.
Three of his sons – Macaulay, Rory, and Kieran – have taken up acting. Culkin served as their manager from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s. In just a few years, the Culkin family went from modest means to wealth. Macaulay became the first child in Hollywood to receive a million dollar salary for My Girl (1991). From 1995 to 1997, Kit was part of a child custody trial.
On December 9, 2008, Kit's daughter Dakota was struck by a vehicle when she stepped off a curb. She was taken to UCLA Medical Center where she died of her injuries the following day. Culkin also had another daughter, Jennifer Adamson, from a previous relationship who died in 2000 at age 29 from a drug overdose.
Culkin now lives in Oregon with his long-time friend and partner, Jeanette Krylowski.
Read more about this topic: Kit Culkin
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“Whenever [Leonard Bernstein] entered or exited a country he would fill in on his passport form not composer or conductor, but musician. Of course people in the press spent a lot of Lenny’s life telling him what he should have done; he should have been a concert pianist, he should have composed more.... And people wouldn’t let him live his own life. But he created his own career, in his own image.”
—John Mauceri (b. 1945)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)