Macaulay Culkin is still navigating the death of his Home Alone movie mother, Catherine O’Hara, after her death earlier this year.
“When Catherine passed away in January, that hit me,” Culkin, 45, told The Gentleman’s Journal in a new cover story. “That hit me pretty good ’cause, you know, it was just too soon. And I felt that we had unfinished business.”
He continued, “I definitely feel like I had unfinished business with her, you know? I feel like I owed her a favor — and I don’t like having an outstanding debt.”
O’Hara died in January at the age of 71. The actress’ cause of death was listed as a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lungs, with rectal cancer as the underlying cause.
Macaulay Culkin’s bond with late Home Alone costar Catherine O’Hara endured for more than 30 years prior to her death at age 71 in January 2026. “Mama. I thought we had time,” Culkin wrote via Instagram when news of her death broke on January 30, 2026. A spokesperson for the actress confirmed to Us Weekly […]
Culkin, for his part, further acknowledged to The Gentleman’s Journal that O’Hara is not his only costar who has died.
“I’m not the tip of the sphere. I’m the butt of the sphere. I’m the caboose,” he said. “I’m bringing up some of that old Hollywood guard kind of thing. I’m going to be one of the last people standing when it comes to that kind of stuff, but my life is unique to me. I don’t really have that many contemporaries when it comes to this stuff.”
Culkin added, “I can’t look left and right and think: ‘Oh, those people have had a similar experience to me.’ But I try to cherish that as much as I can. I feel like I’m living a really uniquely wonderful life.”
O’Hara is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, their two sons and the Schitt’s Creek alum’s siblings. Catherine’s brother Michael O’Hara also recently had a dream of his late sister.
“I was hugging her, which was really beautiful,” Michael said on his “Dreams of Our Loved Ones” podcast last month. “I guess it was sort of a goodbye. … “I’ve had a lovely dream where I was visiting her, and she was in a new house and it was being renovated and she was really busy choosing furniture and couches. And she said, ‘You can sleep here anytime, Michael. You can come over and stay anytime.’”
He added at the time, “The love, you know, continues no matter what. They’re always with us.”
Michael also offered insight into Catherine’s final days before her death.
“She didn’t really want to talk on the phone,” he recalled. “And she didn’t live close by, she’s in Los Angeles.”
