Macaulay Culkin could have worked with Wes Anderson. But then again, Jason Schwartzman’s career might have looked very different if Culkin had…
Culkin said during “Hot Ones” in the below video that he almost starred in “Rushmore” — had he not been “retired” at the time. Anderson’s 1999 classic starred Schwartzman in his first credited onscreen role. Schwartzman played quirky high school student Max Fischer who develops odd relationships with adults in the periphery of his life. Culkin is now revealing that he was sent the script but never read it until years after the film was released.
“Well, you have to understand, at least then, I was retired for at least a big chunk of that, for at least like six or seven years of that,” Culkin said of the pause in his child acting career. “Like I just went to high school, I got married way too young, things like that, you know. I was actually pretty good at reading. I was kind of vivaciously reading through the scripts. But there was a couple that slipped through.”
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He continued, “I remember about two years later kind of clearing out the house, throwing out the old scripts, and I saw the one that I didn’t read was ‘Rushmore.’ I was like, ‘Ah dang. I probably could have done that one.’ Although I can’t imagine anyone but Schwartzman doing that part. But at the same time, I was like, ‘Oh man that would have been a ball and a biscuit, that one.’”
There’s still time for Culkin to work with Anderson, though. That being said, perhaps Culkin is veering more the way of Jodie Foster, who apparently has been offered parts in three different Anderson films but has turned all of them down.
“Over the years, I had so many movies that I tried to get Jodie Foster to be in,” Anderson told Collider. “It used to be every movie, we went to Jodie Foster for a part. And I think I did it three movies in a row, maybe four. And I met her, and I liked her. And I thought it was going to get her. And I think she’s just great, Jodie Foster. And I loved her. […] Anyway, I still would like to get Jodie Foster. But I guess after asking few times, I thought maybe I’m not… I think sometimes somebody has an idea of the kind of work they want to do at that time in his or her life, and we weren’t right.”
Anderson, though, didn’t disclose which films in particular he was in contact about with Foster. “Well, I don’t like to say, because if I say, then you say, ‘Oh, you mean so-and-so, who’s in the movie, wasn’t your first choice.’ And so I don’t want that to be a thing,” he said. “But anyway, she’s pretty amazing, Jodie Foster.”
