Jonathan Lipnicki Says Brenda Song Introduced Him to Macaulay Culkin Years After They Were Child Stars
Jonathan Lipnicki Says Brenda Song Introduced Him to Macaulay Culkin Years After They Were Child Stars
Virginia ChamleeMon, February 23, 2026 at 9:58 PM UTC
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Jonathan Lipnicki (left), Macaulay Culkin
Sam Levi/WireImage; Vinnie Zuffante/Getty
Jonathan Lipnicki is opening up about how he met fellow former child actor Macaulay Culkin
Though the two both shot to stardom as children, they only met as adults
Lipnicki said the two met through Culkin's fiancée, Brenda Song
Jonathan Lipnicki is sharing how he first met Macaulay Culkin.
Speaking on the Monday, Feb. 23 episode of Pod Meets World, 35-year-old Lipnicki says it was Culkin's fiancée Brenda Song who introduced the two.
"In in my adult life, I met Macaulay Culkin because of Brenda Song, who I did [2002 film Like Mike] with," Lipnicki shared. "So, you know, I've hung out with them a couple times, and he's an incredible guy. And the first time we met, we chopped it up for a long time... And he's an incredible person. I'm a really big fan of him as a human being."
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Lipnicki shot to child stardom in 1996's Jerry Maguire, in which he played Ray Boyd, the son of Renée Zellweger’s Dorothy and, later, Tom Cruise’s title character.
Forty-five-year-old Culkin, meanwhile, became a household name starring as Kevin McCallister in the 1990 blockbuster comedy Home Alone. He went on to star in films like My Girl (1991), The Good Son (1993), and Richie Rich (1994), before taking a hiatus from acting and returning with the biographical drama film Party Monster in 2003.
Culkin — who shares sons, Dakota, 4, and Carson, 2, with Song — recently spoke about how "weird" life was as a hyper-successful child actor, saying on an episode of Mythical Kitchen, "I knew that what I was doing was different than other kids. For me, I didn't know how weird my life was until I got older and got away from it."
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Culkin added: "After a while, you actually come up with the vocabulary — the actual vocabulary, the emotional vocabulary – to figure out how this all shook out."
Jonathan Lipnicki (left), Macaulay Culkin
Roy Rochlin/Getty; Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
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Lipnicki, meanwhile, went from Jerry Maguire to major roles in 1999’s Stuart Little, 2000’s The Little Vampire and 2002’s Like Mike.
Speaking to PEOPLE in 2025, he said he had plans to delve deeper into acting.
“I've had half-and-half in my adult career where there are some things that were really good and nobody saw them,” he said. But, while he added he's had no “regrets,” the other half of his projects taught him to be “careful” about what he picks.
“To be quite honest, I said no to about five movies in the last year,” Lipnicki admitted. “I just really want to turn this ship around.”
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
