Macaulay Culkin detailed heartbreaking night he called the cops on his dad

Macaulay Culkin once opened up about the horrifying experience which led to him calling the cops on his own father.

The Home Alone star sat down for an extremely candid interview with Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20 back in 2000, where he spoke about his troubled childhood.

Culkin shot to fame for his role in the Christmas classic, and would become one of the most famous child stars of all time.

At home however, things were a very different picture, with Culkin having a particularly difficult relationship with his father, Kit Culkin.

The former child star has been frank about his relationship with his father, including one interview when he revealed that he had once called the cops on his dad at their apartment.

Culkin was extremely candid in the interview (ABC)

Walters asked Culkin: "Your mother said your father was drunk and abusive?"

Being very open in his answer, Culkin replied: "Yeah, definitely."

He explained: "I went off somewhere for the weekend, and I didn't tell him, and he got angry with me and gave me a nice swipe across the cheek.

"I just went down, and then he told me to get up, 'get up'. I looked at him and I was like I'm not gonna fight you, because I knew that's what he wanted me to do."

Culkin added: "He gave me another one, and my brother walked into the apartment or something like that, and I just said like eff you, I closed my door and locked it, called the cops on him."

Explaining why he called the cops, Culkin said: "I just wanted him to know that I wasn't going to let him get away with those kind of things anymore."

After a hugely successful career as a child actor, including Uncle Buck, Richie Rich, and of course Home Alone, Culkin stepped back from acting when he was 14 years old.

Culkin quit acting when he was 14 (Alberto Rodriguez/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images)

When he was a teenager, Culkin would become embroiled in a legal battle with his parents for control of the $50 million fortune he had made from his acting.

Speaking to Esquire in 2020, he said: "We didn’t want to go with my father. It’s always misconstrued, that I 'emancipated' myself from my parents.

"I legally took my parents’ names off of my trust fund and found an executor, someone who would look over my finances, just in case anyone wanted to stick their f***ing pinkie in the pie."

This came as his parents, who found out had never married, were locked in a custody battle over him and his siblings.

Culkin has said that he struggled with the pressures of the fame that he found at such a young age.