Culkin Reminds Wife of Her Promise About More Kids After the Emmys: ‘She Said, “I Will Give You Four When You Win Oscar”‘

Kieran Culkin won the best supporting actor Oscar for his performance in A Real Pain.

In his speech, he brought up the infamous moment when, after winning Emmy Award for best actor for HBO’s “Succession,” he asked his wife, Jazz, to have a third kid — which he did only because she’d promised to have a third kid if he won the Emmy, not thinking he would.

“After the show, we’re walking through a parking lot … and she goes, ‘Oh, God, I did say that!’” Culkin said. “‘I guess I owe you a third kid.’ And I turned to her, and I said, ‘Really, I want four.’ And she turned to me — I swear to God, this happened there’s just over a year ago — she said, ‘I will give you four when you win an Oscar.’”

In “A Real Pain,” he plays an alternately charming and exasperating Jewish man touring Holocaust sites with his uptight cousin, played by the film’s writer-director, Jesse Eisenberg.

With his first Oscar nomination and win, Culkin concludes his sweep of the category this awards season; he also won at the SAG Awards, Independent Spirt Awards, BAFTA Film Awards, Critics Choice Awards, the National Board of Review, among several others.

Culkin’s free-associative acceptance speeches have been a highlight of the season. At the SAG Awards, he thanked the guild for “this incredibly heavy award,” noting that “I don’t think there’s any way anyone can hold this for 45 seconds — which is the allotted time, Adrien Brody!” Culkin then promptly apologized to the star of “The Brutalist”: “There was no reason to take that shot. I love you. Take your time.”

Winning the Oscar caps off an auspicious few years for Culkin, who also won multiple leading actor awards, including the aforementioned Emmy, for his performance as Roman Roy in the final season of “Succession.” He began his acting career as a small child, making his feature film debut alongside his older brother Macaulay Culkin in the 1990 comedy “Home Alone.” He played Steve Martin and Diane Keaton’s young son in 1991’s “Father of the Bride” and its 1995 sequel, and he played Meryl Streep’s youngest son in 1999’s “Music of the Heart.” But it wasn’t until his first leading performance, in 2002’s coming-of-age dramedy “Igby Goes Down,” that Culkin was able to showcase his ability to mix deft comic timing with a wounded melancholy — which he deployed to devastating effect in “A Real Pain.”

Famously, Culkin nearly dropped out of making “A Real Pain” just weeks before he was due to start shooting because he couldn’t bear to be away from his wife and two kids for a month while on location in Europe.

Emma Stone, one of the film’s producers, talked him out of it with some savvy emotional blackmail. As Culkin explained in an interview, “She goes, ‘If you don’t do it, the entire movie falls apart. But that’s not your responsibility. You shouldn’t feel that burden at all.’”

The other supporting actor nominees were Yura Borisov (“Anora”), Edward Norton (“A Complete Unknown”), Guy Pearce (“The Brutalist”) and Culkin’s “Succession” co-star, Jeremy Strong (“The Apprentice”).

Oscars 2025: Supporting Actor, Kieran Culkin for “A Real Pain”

Culkin Reminds Wife of Her Promise About More Kids After the Emmys: ‘She Said, “I Will Give You Four When You Win Oscar”‘

PROFESSOR / CRITIC / AUTHOR