Macaulay Culkin for Best Villain for his performance). He also appeared, while a student at the School of American Ballet, in a filmed version of "The Nutcracker" as the title role in 1993, which was staged by Peter Martins from the 1954 George Balanchine New York City Ballet version of the work. He was in the films "Getting Even with Dad" (1994), "The Pagemaster" (1994) and "Richie Rich" (1994), which were all only mildly successful at the box office. In 1994, Macaulay took a break from acting after his 15th film in seven years. Desiring a "normal life", he went to a
Home Alone cast Macaulay Culkin in the main role because of his experience with the child actor while shooting "Uncle Buck". Columbus met with other actors for the part, by his count "hundreds and hundreds", as he felt it was his "directorial responsibility". It totaled to 200 children. Columbus finally met with Culkin and agreed he was the right choice for the role. Due to Culkin's age, he could only work until 10 PM which created shooting problems for the crew because of the movie's many night-time scenes. Casting turned out to be a tremendous task. For the role of Harry Lime,