Oscars 2025: Kieran Culkin wins Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain
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Kieran Culkin receives the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain on March 2.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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LOS ANGELES - Kieran Culkin won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar on March 2 for playing a motor-mouthed American tourist in A Real Pain (2024).
A star of the HBO programme Succession (2018 to 2023), Culkin was a heavy favourite to win after sweeping Bafta, Critic’s Choice, Golden Globe and SAG awards for the movie, which is about two cousins on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland.
“I have no idea how I got here,” Culkin said while accepting his award on stage. “I’ve been acting all my life. I never felt like this was my trajectory.”
The movie was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay in 2025, but missed out on picture and director nods.
Culkin, 42, has also won a Golden Globe for playing Roman Roy on four seasons of Succession. He played alongside his older brother Macaulay in Home Alone movies (1990 and 1992), and his younger brother Rory is also an actor.
The lifelong New Yorker’s other film roles include Igby Goes Down (2002), The Cider House Rules (1999), Scott Pilgrim Vs The World (2010), and the Father Of The Bride franchise (1991 to 2020), where he plays the son of American actor Steve Martin and actress Diane Keaton.
Culkin told New York magazine in 2024 he got cold feet about playing Benji in A Real Pain, until American actress Emma Stone, a producer on the film and his former girlfriend, convinced him to shoot it.
“It was one of the very, very, very rare scripts that I laughed out loud reading,” he said.
Culkin’s Succession co-star Jeremy Strong - they are brothers on the show - was also up for Best Supporting Actor, for playing lawyer Roy Cohn in The Apprentice (2024). REUTERS
