Kit Culkin
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Christopher "Kit" Culkin was born on December 6, 1944, in New York
City. He is a fourth-generation New York City boy. His father, Philip
Harley Culkin, was a PR man when he met Kit's mother, Marian Ethel
(Wagner), who was a writer. They had four children: Kit,
Bonnie Bedelia, Terry and Candy.
Professionally since age ten and even before that, Kit and his siblings
worked on the stage in New York City. Their mother was their manager
and she was aggressive and formidable in her mission, but only to get
good educations for her brood, and to expose them to the culture of the
NY theater. Bonnie and Kit were the young children in
George Balanchine's "Nutcracker" one
season (Balanchine is the legendary head of the New York City Ballet).
At age 15 Culkin worked in "Becket" on Broadway and was on tour with
Anthony Quinn and
Laurence Olivier, and also played in
"Hamlet" with Richard Burton and
shows with many other famous stage actors. For ten years he worked on
Broadway in different productions. When he was about 19 his mother died
of cancer. She had done everything for him as a manager and motivated
him and provided the base from which he kept working. She was gone and
so was his motivation. There were things the young Kit had not done as
a regular person. He went to college, working odd jobs and then worked
as a photographer's assistant to
Martha Swope, the photographer for the NY
City Ballet and the Opera, once again seeing Balanchine regularly--even
visiting his home. After this he bought a car and traveled America,
sitting at old battle sites and studying what he really loved: history.
He traveled around for ten years before going back to NY to live with
his father. On one of these trips home he met Patricia by the side of
the road, working on a construction crew. Her pregnancy and continuing
pregnancies (Kit always wanted a big family) made it impossible to go
back to the stage as he had to provide a regular paycheck for the kids.
He continued to visit his friends in the theater and once in awhile did
something himself and always took the kids with him.