Christopher Columbus reveals how Home Alone's McCallister family afforded their house

Christopher Columbus has revealed how the Home Alone McCallister family afforded their house.

The director of the hit 1990 holiday flick, written by John Hughes, has revealed the professions of Kate (Catherine O'Hara) and Peter McCallister (John Heard), the parents of Kevin (Macaulay Culkin), the eight-year-old boy who is left alone and fends off crooks who try to break into the family home, explaining how they could afford their huge Chicago mansion.

He told The Hollywood Reporter: "Back then, John and I had a conversation about it, and we decided on what the jobs were.

"Catherine O'Hara's Kate McCallister was a very successful fashion designer, as suggested by the mannequins in the family's basement.

"As for John Heard's Peter McCallister, he can't say for sure.

"The father could have, based on John Hughes' own experience, worked in advertising, but I don't remember what the father did.

"He was able to rule out one profession, though, which people online speculated might have drawn criminals Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) to the McCallister home in the first place: not organised crime — even though there was, at the time, a lot of organised crime in Chicago."

After Home Alone, Christopher, 66, went on to direct two Harry Potter films — The Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets — and his experience of working with Macaulay, 44, influenced his casting search.

He said in Demi Lovato's new Hulu documentary Child Star: "We went from shooting Home Alone [where] nobody cared, but in the course of a year, Macaulay Culkin became a huge star, and that was unexpected.

"It's not like Harry Potter, where you know that it may be extraordinarily successful…

"I came from a working-class family, and I've seen it a couple of times with kids when you see someone who comes from a working-class family, and suddenly they're thrown into — the kid becomes the breadwinner for the family.

"You go on the street, you go into a pub, you go anywhere, and people are saying, 'Who are you gonna cast? Who's gonna be Harry Potter, who's gonna be Harry Potter?'

"You take that information and you bring it back to the actor and the actor's parents: 'This is gonna get pretty intense.'"

Christopher added he felt a tremendous responsibility to ensure any child cast in Harry Potter "knew what they were getting into", particularly as he'd seen how Macaulay — who has been outspoken about his troubled family life, including his "abusive" father — struggled with fame.

He said: "Suddenly, I realised that parents had to be a big part of it.

"I can't have [an actor] go home to a really sort of shaky environment for the sake of a film. It's not worth it. It was as important to cast the parents as it was to cast the kids."

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