MOVIE NEWS – According to the director of the first two Harry Potter films, the casting of the children was shaped by Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone stardom and troubled family life.

As the director of Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter films, Chris Columbus directed some of the most iconic child roles in film history. His tip for finding the right kids is to make sure their parents are right. Columbus sat down with Demi Lovato for Hulu’s “Child Star” documentary (via Entertainment Weekly ) and shared that her experience with Macaulay Culkin’s stardom in the wake of Home Alone also played a role in her search to cast the Potter films.

“We went from shooting ‘Home Alone’ [where] nobody cared, but in the course of a year, Macaulay Culkin became a huge star, and that was unexpected,” said Columbus. “It’s not like ‘Harry Potter,’ where you know that it may be extraordinarily successful. … I came from a working-class family, and I’ve seen it a couple of times with kids when you see someone who comes from a working-class family, and suddenly they’re thrown into — the kid becomes the breadwinner for the family .”

From the very beginning, Columbus was aware that the whole world was watching the casting of Harry Potter and explained: “I had to put blinders on because that’s all I was hearing everywhere. You go on the street, you go into a pub, you go anywhere, and people are saying, ‘Who are you gonna cast? Who’s gonna be Harry Potter, who’s gonna be Harry Potter?’ You take that information and you bring it back to the actor and the actor’s parents: ‘This is gonna get pretty intense.'”

The filmmaker “felt a huge responsibility” to make sure that the child actors in the Harry Potter franchise “knew what they were getting into”, as stars such as Daniel Radcliffe had to sign on for several films at once.

“That’s the rest of your life as a child star,” Columbus said. “That’s gonna be your legacy, and you have to learn how to live with that.”

During the filming of Home Alone, Columbus was unaware that Culkin was struggling with a troubled family life at home. The actor has long spoken openly about his father’s abuse. He once told podcaster Marc Maron: “He was a bad man. He was abusive, physically and mentally — I can show you all my scars if I wanted to.” His sudden stardom with the film didn’t mix well with Culkin’s tumultuous family life, so it was important for Columbus to find children for the Harry Potter film who had a solid home base.

“Suddenly, I realized that parents had to be a big part of it,” Columbus told Lovato in the documentary. “I can’t have [an actor] go home to a really sort of shaky environment for the sake of a film. It’s not worth it. It was as important to cast the parents as it was to cast the kids.”

Source: EW