Where were they then?: The kid cast of Home Alone in the rest of the ’90s
What everyone (besides the Culkin brothers) who played a McCallister cousin did for the rest of the decade.
Four years after the movie, one supporting Home Alone child actor portrayed a fictitious hockey player in the equally fictitious Junior Goodwill Games. Meanwhile another was a real-life world champion junior judoka.
Imagine what assistance those two could have lent Kevin McCalliser (Macaulay Culkin) against the Wet Bandits with those skills?
For obvious reasons, and for better or worse, the Home Alone star’s subsequent exploits are well-documented. Similarly, Macaulay’s brother Kieran (aka cousin Fuller McCallister) built on his 1990 big-screen debut with 10 more movies throughout the decade. By the end he had nabbed two nominations for a Young Artist Award and one shared with his Cider House Rules castmates for a Screen Actors Guild prize.
Among the child actors in Home Alone and its sequel, the Culkin brothers dominated the story and the legacy. They still do.
But whether it was Buzz bookending the plot with a spat and makeup or everyone animating the crowd and chaos, it took 10 other grade schoolers, tweens, and teens to fill the three McCallister tree branches.
When they finished doing that, they variously fulfilled a scholastic and/or collegiate education over the remaining fourth-fifths of the ’90s. And like the components of a high-end athletic team at those levels, some stuck (and still are sticking) with their first forte while others quickly started warranting fascination by other means.
All of the following TV and film information is per the Internet Movie Database.
Daiana Campeanu (Sondra)
Now billed as Diana Rein, Campeanu built on her Home Alone and Home Alone 2 icebreakers as the babysitter in 1993’s Dennis the Menace. Her fourth and final role of the 20th century, and for the next 12 years, was a one-off part in a 1998 episode of Brimstone.
Little else about Campeanu/Rein’s childhood endeavors has been publicized. Her website’s bio section highlights Home Alone but essentially fast-forwards from there to her permanent path as a blues musician.
Jedidiah Cohen (Rod)
Home Alone and Home Alone 2 constituted Cohen’s only IMDB acting credits until he appeared in two short films in 2000. But you will find a little more of him on the Internet Broadway Database, which secures the record of his part in The Secret Garden.
From late April 1991 to New Year’s weekend 1993, Cohen played Dickon in the St. James Theatre’s production of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s magnum opus. He went on to Harvard, where he sang in the prestigious Harvard Krokodiloes a capella club and graduated in 1999 with a degree in astronomy and astrophysics.
Cohen has since established himself in the tech industry. But in a July 2016 interview with Chicago Inno, he offered, “My grades were good, but my extracurricular acting career is what got me into Harvard.”
Matt Doherty (Steffan)
“Joyueax noel. Welcome to Paris.”
Or not?
As Steffan — Uncle Rob and Aunt Georgette’s kids — Doherty had his debut film’s most prominent moment cut from the final reel. He also did not return for the 1992 sequel.
But moviegoers did see him — and, unlike in Home Alone, heard him speak — that autumn as Averman in The Mighty Ducks.
Doherty was one of six child actors to reprise his Mighty Ducks role for the whole trilogy, resurfacing as the squad’s bespectacled wiseacre in 1994’s D2 and 1996’s D3. Between his first two hockey movies, he played Mike Myers’ son in So I Married an Axe Murderer. Coincidentally, that project featured Home Alone 2 supporting player Brenda Fricker.
By the time of the D3’s release, Doherty had already graduated from Thornwood High School in his native Chicagoland locale. He stuck around to major in theatre at Northwestern University, where he garnered his degree in 1999.
Angela Goethals (Linnie)
Quality trumped quantity among Goethals’ TV and film credits in the ’90s. Another non-returnee to Home Alone 2, she showed up in three other films over the decade. The last of those was 1996’s Oscar-nominated Jerry Maguire, which premiered while she was a sophomore at Vassar College. Goethals graduated in 1999 with a degree in French, and returned to acting the next year.
Previously on the small screen, Goethals starred as Angela Doolan on Phenom in the 1993-94 TV season. Depending on how you look at it, the ABC sitcom about a teenage tennis wunderkind was either a one-year wonder or a one-year blunder.
For what it’s worth, Phenom fetched Goethals a Young Artist Award nomination. It was her fourth and final such nod, the second being for best young actress in a supporting role in a motion picture, that picture being…Home Alone.
Michael C. Maronna (Jeff)
In a pattern reminiscent of The Simpsons, The Adventures of Pete and Pete grew from a modest series of interstitial-length episodes in the late ’80s to a widely acclaimed half-hour program in the ’90s.
Between the shorts and the full-fledged show, Maronna starred as Big Pete in five one-off specials and as Kevin’s brother Jeff in both Home Alone flicks. Within a year of the sequel, Pete and Pete landed its fresh legs on Nickelodeon, where it ran for three seasons.
Maronna — whose co-title character, Little Pete, was played by Doherty’s Mighty Ducks teammate Danny Tamberelli — moved on to commercials for the rest of the decade. His only other TV and film roles until 2000 were a one-off appearance on Law and Order and a part in the French movie Le New Yorker.
Kristin Minter (Heather)
Minter’s first film after Home Alone reeked of a dreaded sophomore slide. Cool as Ice fetched her a Razzie nomination for worst new star in 1991.
But that critical setback did not hurt her in the slightest. From 1990 to 1999, 24 movies or TV shows enlisted Minter. The midway point was arguably her breakthrough, as she got the parts of Rachel MacLeod on Highlander and desk clerk Randi on ER in the fall of 1995.
The former yielded three episodes, but the latter role recurred for 71, including 44 that premiered in the ’90s.
“Where did Randi go after season 10?” The Atlantic’s David Sims wondered upon ranking her No. 36 out of ER’s top 45 characters. “The show had stopped having fun with its classic ensemble at that point.”
Senta Moses (Tracy)
Moses stood out in Home Alone 2’s youth ensemble, at least in the eyes of the Young Artist Awards panel. For her reprisal as Tracy — where she has the sequel’s first audible line, asking the whereabouts of her sunscreen — she was up for 1994’s title of best youth actress in a leading role in a motion picture.
Moses built on that performance toward a core cast position on NBC’s Running the Halls, a half-season wonder that ran in the fall of 1993. When that series lost its grip on teammate Saved by the Bell’s coattails, Moses landed on her feet with a three-episode stint opposite Claire Danes and Jared Leto on My So-Called Life. Within another year, she was a fixture on Beakman’s World.
For the last quarter of the ’90s, Moses subsisted on guest spots. Of particular note, she put in six appearances on Sister, Sister, then one apiece on Touched by an Angel and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Devin Ratray (Buzz)
When Home Alone 2: Lost in New York premiered, thus shifting Kevin’s saga to Buzz’s real-life hometown, Ratray was past the halfway mark at LaGuardia High School. A Facebook page dedicated to “Alumni and Friends” of his arts-specialized alma mater is still quick to cite his Home Alone history when relaying the 1994 graduate’s latest exploits.
Upon finishing his scholastic education, he capitalized on more big-time Big Apple gigs. With Ratray preceding Maronna by two years, both of Kevin’s brothers guest starred on Law and Order. The 1995 episode “Performance” was Ratray’s first of two stints in the series and four in the franchise, although the rest came after the turn of the century.
Between his two shifts as Buzz, Ratray was also in a 1991 TV movie. He followed the sequel with a supporting part in 1993’s Dennis the Menace, then logged two other IMDB credits before a four-year hiatus beginning in 1997.
“I took myself out of the business to study film at NYU and the School of Visual Arts,” he explained to the Albany Daily News. While that temporary disappearance from the mainstream meant broadening his horizons for the new millennium, it also meant snowballing through the ’90s a little less than some other McCallister child actors.
Anna Slotky (Brooke)
Save her one-off portrayal of Allison in a 2000 episode of Get Real, Slotky did all of her mainstream acting in the ’90s. Between the two Home Alone films, she played Ruth Ann as part of the title family on the short-lived NBC dramedy The Torkelsons. Her role was written off the show after its inaugural 1991-92 season.
Beyond that, Slotky’s most noteworthy screen stint yielded 13 episodes of Sister, Sister, spanning the midway point of Seasons 2 through 3.
Another real-life Chicagolander, Slotky resettled in Greater Los Angeles, but put her studies ahead of acting. She graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, as part of the class of 1999. She was thus an upperclassman by the time she put two spots on 3rd Rock from the Sun and one on Step by Step behind her.
A three-year hiatus from the screens ensued, broken up only by the aforementioned Get Real.
Hillary Wolf (Megan)
Between her first and second stints as Kevin’s oldest sibling, Wolf starred as Laura in Girls Don’t Cry…They Get Even. There she uttered through her character, “If these are the best years of my life, I must have some serious third-degree burns in my future.”
Not so much for Wolf, although the balance of her ’90s featured some triumph over adversity. Already a seasoned actor compared to her contemporaries — she had appeared in six ’80s movies — Wolf found a magnetic spotlight in another arena after making Home Alone 2 her film finale.
Wolf’s triumph at the 1994 World Judo Junior Championship in Cairo was a first in Team USA history. Evidence of her effort to defend that title in Japan is preserved on Judovision’s YouTube channel.
At age 19, Wolf tested her black-belt caliber in Atlanta on the 1996 Olympic team. She stayed in the sport for the rest of the decade, and recovered from a career-threatening ACL injury to make the team once more for the 2000 Games in Sydney.