Kieran Culkin heaped the love on his mother during his emotional Emmys win Monday night — and snubbed his estranged father, whom he has previously called “not a good person.”
Now, the actor’s stepfather told Page Six that Patricia Brentrup, the 69-year-old mother of Kieran and brother Macaulay Culkin, has recently had “hard times with her health” and that Kieran has been helping her with doctor appointments.
Over the past eight days, Culkin also won a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice award for his role as the renegade son Roman Roy in HBO’s mega-hit “Succession.”
Throwing his jacket on the stage as he collected his Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama, the 41-year-old teared up as he thanked Brentrup, “for giving me life and my childhood, which was great. So thank you for that.”
Backstage, Kieran had more to say about his mom: “She’s just an absolutely wonderful woman who took on raising seven kids in a studio apartment, by herself.
“There was a guy there — he didn’t do anything,” he added, referring to his estranged father Kit Culkin.
A week earlier, he profusely thanked his mom during his Globes acceptance speech, saying, “Mom, thank you so much for doing everything for us. You are an amazing woman.”
Kieran’s stepfather, Mart Cox, told Page Six Tuesday that his wife has been suffering with some health struggles recently.
Follow the Emmys 2024 with our up-to-the-minute coverage:
Speaking from his home in Montana, where he raises six horses, Cox, 69, said mom-of-seven Brentrup had been unable to attend her son Macaulay Culkin’s Hollywood Star of Fame ceremony last month, adding: “Patty was invited, and they wanted to fly her out, but she’s been having some hard times with her health.”
He said that Brentrup spent a few months before the holidays at Kieran’s home in Brooklyn, which he shares with wife Jazz Charton, daughter Kinsey “Zissou” Sioux, 4, and son Wilder Wolf, 2.
“Kieran was looking after her and she was going to doctors in the city,” Brentrup said. “All the kids have been very helpful, oh for sure. Just from Patty, they have a lot of love in them — she is an incredible woman.”
Cox, who has been married to Brentrup for the past 12 years and has two kids of his own, added: “We certainly are proud of Kieran and we’re really happy life is just beginning for him. But we have nine kids and we love them all.
“None ever gets more love than the other. That’s how their mom raised them — although Kieran always thought he was the favorite!”
With a chuckle, Cox said he and his wife have only watched a few episodes of “Succession”, revealing: “I’m not big on TV. We never really watch TV … it’s not everything in our lives.”
Indeed, the couple had not even seen Culkin’s wins.
“Patty has a lot of books and reads a lot. She’s not into TV as much as you would think,” said Cox.
Kieran, he said, moved out and got his own apartment when he was 18. “His mom furnished it and got him going, got him the pots, she’s always taken care of him.”
He added that the children often come to Montana in the summer and he’s looking forward to teaching the grandchildren how to ride horses.
In 2021, Kieran told the Hollywood Reporter of Cox: “He’s nice to me … he gave me a horse.”
It’s an amazing turn of events for Kieran, who grew up in near poverty — sharing bunk beds with his siblings in a railroad-style apartment at East 94th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.
“It was just a hallway, and there were no separating doors, except for the bathroom, which didn’t have a lock,” Kieran recalled to Vanity Fair in 2018. “They raised seven kids in that apartment — for years! They just kept bringing babies home to this little space.”
“I didn’t know that I wanted to be a parent, but the moment that I knew I was going to become a father. I knew I wanted to become the parent that she was,” he said about his mother. (Kieran also addressed his wife from the stage: “Thank you for sharing your life with me and giving me two amazing kids. And Jazz, I want more.”)
Kit had worked as a taxi driver before landing a job as a sacristan for a Catholic church on the UES. Meanwhile, Brentrup was a telephone operator at nights for a theatrical agency.
The couple, who never wed and split in 1995, had sons Macaulay and Kieran; actor Rory, 34; and Shane, 47, and Christian 36, who live out of the spotlight. They also had daughters Quinn, 39, and Dakota, who died in 2008 after being struck by a car in California.
When the kids were young, they met casting director Billy Hopkins through a neighbor. Hopkins gave Macaulay his first job at 6 years old in the 1988 drama “Rocket Gibraltar” starring Burt Lancaster.
“They were so poor I had to use my own money to make sure that [Macaulay] got to and from rehearsal,” Hopkins told New York Magazine in 2001. “Macaulay would crawl under the bleachers at the theater to look for change that had fallen out of people’s pockets.”
Things changed when Macaulay, who is two years older than Kieran, hit the big time in the iconic movies “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2.” After that, the family moved to a brownstone on the Upper East Side.
Having landed bit parts in the “Home Alone” movies, Kieran co-starred at age nine with Steve Martin, Diane Keaton and Kimberly Williams-Paisley in “Father of the Bride,” followed by its sequel.
Kit, who is the brother of “Die Hard” star Bonnie Bedelia, managed his son’s acting careers for a while — but was known for creating chaos in Hollywood.
“Kit Culkin’s demands resulted in a year’s delay in filming, in script changes and in a revolving door of directors and producers,” The New York Times reported in 1993 about the movie “The Nutcracker.”
“[He said] ‘Do good or I’ll hit you.’ He was a bad man,” Macaulay said of Kit on the WTF With Marc Maron podcast in 2018. “He was abusive, physically and mentally — I can show you all my scars if I wanted to.”
Page Six has reached out to Kit Culkin for comment. Kit’s late partner, Jeanette Krylowski, previously denied to New York Magazine that he was abusive to any of his children.
Although Kieran has said that Kit was never abusive toward him, he told the Hollywood Reporter in 2021: “He wasn’t a good person and, yeah, probably not a good parent … I never looked at him as Dad. He didn’t really belong here, and when he was finally gone for good, it made the most sense.”
The last time that Kieran saw Kit was in 2014, backstage at the Broadway play “This Is Our Youth.”
As of 2021, they had not spoken, and Kieran told The Hollywood Reporter: “F–k him…I don’t care.”
“I don’t know if anyone is talking to him,” Cox said of Kit.
