Kieran Culkin earned his second Golden Globe on Sunday night, his first in a movie category, for his work in “A Real Pain.” In the film, which was written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, who also co-stars, Culkin plays Benji, one of two cousins on a heritage tour of Poland to honor their recently deceased grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor.
Culkin won a Golden Globe last year for his work on the television series “Succession,” playing the media scion Roman Roy. Eisenberg had not seen that wildly popular television show when he cast Culkin in the very personal film, which explores generational trauma. The gamble ended up working out: Culkin has been considered a strong supporting actor contender at the Oscars ever since the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival about a year ago.
But in a conversation with Kyle Buchanan, the New York Times’s awards expert, Culkin said he much preferred being at home with his wife, Jazz Charton, and two children instead of working. He even said he tried to pull out of “A Real Pain” when a shift in the filming schedule meant he would be away from them for a month. “I was like, ‘I can’t be away from the family for that long,’ and I had a flip-out,” he said.
