Macaulay Culkin is reflecting on his relationship with his father, Kit Culkin. "I had a pretty acrimonious relationship with my father, famously so," Macaulay, 45, said on the Monday, December 29, episode of the "SmartLess" podcast, when asked whether his parents were his managers. Macaulay continued, "As soon as I was able to kind of push him out, my quality of life on a day-to-day level definitely went up." Cohost Jason Bateman went on to note that he had a "very complicated relationship with that as well." Macaulay Culkin Says Toxic Relationship With His Father 'Left a Mark' "Certainly as you get older, in retrospect, it becomes even more complicated as you become a parent and you start to think about the decisions that they make about being an employee in your life and how that adjusts the dynamic of how you look at your parents, as what should be your north star, the person you follow, when instead they create a dynamic where you're the boss, at an age when you're, kind of, needing parental guidance," Bateman said, while Macaulay added, "And that's where they're bread and buttered." Kit managed Macaulay's career in the late 1980s and early 1990s when he was a child star in hit films like Home Alone and Uncle Buck. At 14 years old, Macaulay retired from acting. Kevin Winter/Getty Images "I was done. I was like, I hope you all made your money, because there's no more coming from me," he explained on Monday's episode. "I made my name, I made my mark, I made my fortune." While Macaulay did not offer specifics about his financial situation, he explained that he could "do anything" he wanted - including "play video games all day long." Macaulay explained that he ultimately got the "lion's share" of money for every role he booked as a kid, but it "stopped" being fun for him. Macaulay Culkin Details Decades-Long Estrangement From Dad Kit "I wanted to take a break, and I said I was getting really taxed," he recalled. "I was not heard. That was something that really affected me, and affected my work and stuff like that. It was just like, 'Oh, I'm on the hamster wheel and I can't get off.' Once I had some autonomy and some agency in my life, I grabbed it with both hands." While on his hiatus from acting, Macaulay shared that he "just went to high school, fell in love, got drunk for the first time, things like that," but didn't have an interest in another career. "I was kind of just drifting around, and tried to figure out what I wanted out of life and so forth," he said. "This was a calling that found me. I didn't find it. I wanted to explore that in a different way, on my terms." Now, Macaulay - who is engaged to Brenda Song - is still "technically" retired. But sometimes he makes a return. (The couple, who got engaged in 2022, welcomed sons Dakota and Carson in 2021 and 2022, respectively.) "I retire and then, if I find something I like, I unretire, do that, and I immediately retire afterwards," he explained. "Every gig is my last."