Kieran Culkin only realised he “wanted to be an actor” 31 years after he started working.
Kieran Culkin has been acting most ofhis life
The 41-year-old star had been on screen for most of his life but it took until he began filming HBO’s ‘Succession’ – in which he played Roman Roy – for him to realise it was truly his passion.
Speaking to Jesse Eisenberg on a Tribeca Film Festival panel, People magazine reports he said: “It wasn’t until about halfway through the first season of ‘Succession’ where I came home and told my wife, ‘I think I know what I want to do for a living, I think I want to be an actor.’
“I’d been doing it for about 31 years at that point.”
Because he began acting as a child, the ‘Home Alone’ actor admitted he reached a point where he did’nt feel that he had “chose to do this” as a career.
He said: “I had that sort of crisis at like 19, 20, which I think is sort of normal.
“I think a lot of people at that age are trying to figure out what the hell they want to do with their life.”
Working on ‘Succession’ meant Kieran had to let go of his usual way of working and desire to be “completely on book”, but after ignoring the “panic” he then felt, he found a “weird freedom” with his performance.
He said: “I went, ‘Fine, f*** it. I don’t know anything, and we’re just going to do it completely differently this time’.
“And I found a weird freedom in doing something completely unknown that I hadn’t done before and had been forced to trust people that it turns out were great.
“But that was, itself, that was its own sort of new experience.”
Kieran never used to like rehearsing or watching his own performance, but that all changed with ‘Succession’ as he needed to tune in to find out how the plot was being shaped as a result of what had been left on the cutting room floor.
He said: “I actually had to keep up with it because there’s so much stuff that didn’t make the cut or things that were no longer part of the show.
“Also, I was a fan of the show so I kind of wanted to see how it was gonna play out.”
