The walk of shame

The one where I go to watch a star being honoured on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

A few weeks ago, I interviewed Schitt's Creek and Home Alone star Catherine O'Hara. I won't say any more since it's for a profile in a magazine that doesn't come out until the new year. The reason I mention it, is because it was talking to her I learnt former child actor Macaulay Culkin was to be honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. O'Hara, who played his mum in the first two blockbuster Home Alone films in the early 1990s, would present it to him, in a ceremony on 1 December.

Why is that even news? I hear you ask. Probably for the same reason it made me feel a bit choked up. Because - confession time! - once upon a time, Macaulay Culkin was everything to me. He was my first celebrity crush. If you can even call it that, when you're nine years old. I thought he was the greatest person on the planet. I have literally never said that out loud.

Between the ages of 8 and 11, my bedroom walls were completely covered in pictures cut out of the magazines I would spend my pocket money on each week. I liked him in Home Alone (1990). I loved him in My Girl (1991). By the time Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) came out, I hadn't just been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt - I was the proud owner of an 18-inch talking Kevin doll who said phrases from the film like: "I'd rather kiss a toilet seat" and "You guys give up?" I wish I was joking. 

By the time I started secondary school, Macaulay's voice broke and Richie Rich (his last film as a 'child star' before disappearing into the wilderness) flopped in cinemas, the love affair was over. 

What followed were years and years of no-one-must-ever-know embarrassment and denial about that whole chapter of my life. It felt like a shameful secret; something that could be held over me. Case in point, when I was weeks into having my first proper boyfriend and one of my oldest friends affectionately teased, "would now be a good time to tell him about Macaulay Culkin?!" 

So you see, it's complicated. Because I loved him, in a wholesome nine-year-old dreaming of becoming an actress, sort of way. But then I hit puberty and started caring too much about what other people thought. And I hated him for representing what I looked back on as a deeply uncool phase in my life. 

I haven't thought about Macaulay for a long time. Aside from listening to a fascinating interview he did for the WTF With Marc Maron podcast in 2018, I've probably been more invested in his brother Kieran, who memorably played dick-pic-sending Roman Roy in the brilliant satirical comedy drama Succession. 

So when I heard that Mac, as he is now known, was being immortalised in La La Land, it stirred something in me. He was my introduction to the world of Hollywood, and I never gave him credit. I might not have become an actress but I did make a career out of interviewing celebrities. And now I live in Los Angeles and he's just down the road getting a Hollywood star... on 1 December you say?... At 11.30am? 

Yep, I did something my pretentious 19-year-old self would never have forgiven me for. I went to the ceremony. I took an Uber to Hollywood Boulevard, which is the equivalent of living in London and choosing to go to Piccadilly Circus (ie, you just don't). And I stood in a crowd of tourists wearing Christmas hats, waving their iPhones, and waiting for ‘Kevin’ to appear; the Home Alone score blasting out of speakers.

I couldn't hear a thing. I couldn't see a thing. It wasn't really a thing. I would not recommend the Hollywood Walk of Fame as something to do when you’re in LA. But I'm glad I showed up. It felt liberating to go and do something for no other reason than I just wanted to. I gave Macaulay a little cheer. And then I went home to watch the footage on YouTube like everyone else.

Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.