Kieran Culkin has opened up about the pain of losing one of his ‘favorite people in the world’, his older sister Dakota Culkin.
Dakota died 16 years ago at age 29 after she was hit by a car in Los Angeles in 2008.
In an interview on CBS Sunday Morning, the Succession star, 42, said he lost ‘a big piece of myself’ when his sibling died.
‘I only knew who I was because of who my siblings are,’ he said. ‘So, to lose one was losing a big piece of myself.’
‘Losing one of my favorite people in the world, it doesn’t get better,’ he continued. ‘It doesn’t get easier, it’s just you get used to it.’
Kieran Culkin, pictured 2022, has opened up about the death of one of his ‘favorite people in the world’, his older sister Dakota Culkin
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How Kieran Culkin's real-life family dramas echo Succession – from rivalry between the actor brothers to drug arrests and the tragic loss of their sister
Kieran played Roman Roy on Succession, a character who reminded him of his sister.
‘After a couple seasons on Succession, I realized there was some stuff that Roman did that I was like, “Oh, that’s my sister,”‘ he said.
‘That was her sense of humor.’ She could find exactly what the right thing to make fun of you was that would get to you, but be really funny and make the room laugh. That was her.’
Kieran is one of six children his parents had together – Dakota, Quinn, Macaulay, Rory, and Shane. His father also had daughter from a previous relationship, Jennifer Adamson, who died of a drug overdose in 2000.
Kieran previously described Dakota’s death as ‘the worst thing that’s ever happened’, recalling how her passing left all of the Culkin siblings ‘torn up inside’.
‘That’s the worst thing that’s ever happened, and there’s no sugar coating that one,’ Kieran told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021 when asked about the death of Dakota, who was struck by a car when she stepped off the curb outside of a bar and in front of a moving vehicle.
‘Each one of us handled it very differently,’ the father-of-two added of his siblings’ reactions to Dakota’s death. ‘I think everyone was just torn up inside.’
In the years that have passed since his sister’s death, Kieran admitted that he has never truly been able to come to terms with the loss, confessing that he doesn’t think ‘it’s ever going to be fine’.
Kieran’s sister Dakota was killed at the age of 30 when she stepped in front of a moving vehicle in 2008
‘What has it been, 13 years now? Holy s**t. That’s crazy. Jesus f***ing Christ,’ he said. ‘I accepted at the time that this is going to be forever and it’s never going to be fine.’
The actor, who has two children with wife Jazz Charton, said he still breaks down in tears when he thinks about his sister, particularly when he recalls a tender moment that they shared and realizes that his own kids will never get the chance to know their aunt.
‘It’s always going to be devastating,’ Kieran continued.
‘I still weep about it out of nowhere. Something funny she did will pop in the head and make me laugh and then I’m weeping.
‘Sometimes it’s knowing that she’s not going to meet my kids and they don’t get to have her and it’s hard to describe what she was like.’
Kieran said his character on Succession reminded him of Dakota; pictured on the show with co-stars Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook
Kieran has rarely opened up about his private life, and he has refrained from going into detail about the impact of his sister’s loss in the past – save for a Vanity Fair interview in 2018, when it was revealed that he had initially given up his supporting role in the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World when he received the news about Dakota’s death.
Although the actor ended up taking the part, he recalled telling director Edgar Wright that he had ‘dyed his hair green and put on quite a lot of weight ’cause he’d been drinking a lot’ in the wake of Dakota’s passing.
At the time of Dakota’s death, Macaulay’s then-spokesperson called her passing ‘a terrible accident’, adding that the family did not wish to make any other comment.