‘Home Alone’ Mom Catherine O’Hara Theorizes the McCallisters Probably Inherited Their Wealth

January 27, 2024 @ 5:36 PM

The 1990 Christmas movie “Home Alone” has been cemented as a holiday classic, which has encouraged plenty of debate and conversation about the film. The movie’s stars aren’t exempt — as “Schitt’s Creek” alum Catherine O’Hara proved in an interview with People. She told the outlet that when it comes to the frequest question of how the McCallisters could afford their million-dollar-plus mansion, she offered her theory: an inheritance.

“People have these theories,” O’Hara said. “Where’d they get their money? Maybe he inherited it… they inherited it.”

O’Hara told People, “I thought the house was pretty amazing. Oh Lord, yeah. I was aware of how beautiful it was, but no, I never thought of their money. That’s not where my head was when I was doing [the movie]. Of course, they all went to Paris, didn’t they?”

As others have noted, it was Kevin’s uncle/dad Peter’s brother Rob who paid for the extended family’s intended epic Paris trip.

In December, the New York Times and economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago collaborated on an investigation into the income of the McCallister family. They concluded that to afford the home — which is currently valued at $2.34 million — the family’s annual income in 1990 would have had to be $305,000.

“I guess Peter had his own religion,” O’Hara joked. “Church of the McCallisters.”

The actress also had plenty of kind words for the cast and crew she worked with, especially the children — including Macaulay and Kieran Culkin — and the movie’s director, Christopher Columbus. She continued, “I need to care about the whole thing. I don’t care to do a great role in a bad project. You want to be part of something good, and that’s how you go.”

“Then the people that you’re going to get to work with and the experience, the day-to-day experience. And in that case, it was lovely. All those kids that played our children were just lovely,” she added.

“Chris Columbus, lovely man,” O’Hara said. “He’s a family guy himself. I think he had like five kids already at the time. And John Hughes. John Hughes wasn’t there a lot, but wrote such a beautiful script, obviously. It’s a perfect movie, isn’t it?”

“Home Alone” was released on Thanksgiving Day in 1990. The movie was made for $15 million and spent 12 weeks as the number-one film — before going on to gross nearly $500 million around the world. The movie beat out several other big hits at the time, including “Ghost” and “Pretty Woman.”