‘Harry Potter’ Director Says Kids Casting Search Was Shaped by Macaulay Culkin’s ‘Home Alone’ Stardom and Troubled Family Life: The Parents Are Just as ‘Important’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Chris Columbus has directed some of the most iconic child performances in movie history as the filmmaker behind “Home Alone” and the first two “Harry Potter” films, and his tip for finding the right kids is to make sure they have the right parents.

Columbus sat down with Demi Lovato for her Hulu documentary “Child Star” (via Entertainment Weekly) and said that his experience with Macaulay Culkin‘s stardom in the wake of “Home Alone” informed his casting search on “Harry Potter.” “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,” Columbus said. “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.” Columbus realized from the start that his “Harry Potter” casting search was being closely watched by the entire world, explaining: “I had to put blinders on because that’s all I was hearing everywhere.

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.'” The filmmaker “felt a tremendous responsibility” to make sure whichever child actors he was casting in the “Harry Potter” franchise “knew what they were getting into” as stars like Daniel Radcliffe were required to sign on for multiple films at once. “That’s the.