Part of Home Alone featuring Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci, Catherine O'Hara, John Heard, and Roberts Blossom.
Rise to Fame
He got fired from The Wonder Years before the show even aired. The producers thought his movie career ambitions were a liability, replaced him for the pilot broadcast, then called a day or two later asking him back because his replacement sounded worse. He negotiated a raise. That kind of stubborn luck followed him into film: years of solid character work in Diner (1982) and Breaking Away (1979) set up the double hit of Home Alone (1990) and City Slickers (1991), which made him inescapable for about a decade.
In the Spotlight
The Hollywood exit happened after Home Alone 2 and it wasn't a crisis. He now runs a citrus and cattle operation in Ventura County, California, and has been doing serious bronze sculpture for around 25 years, with public commissions in six California cities. He came back to TV in 2023 to lead For All Mankind Season 4 on Apple TV+ as a NASA administrator. His 2024 memoir is titled Home and Alone, which tells you more about his priorities than the next five interviews ever could.
Side Notes
He dropped out of high school in his senior year to move to New York and study acting at HB Studio, a bet that most 17-year-olds don't survive. The Hollywood exit came after he and his wife calculated they'd reached financial independence. The farm life wasn't a pivot or a breakdown. It was the plan.