FOR brothers Kieran and Rory, the last name Culkin has to be a double-edged sword. Sure, the mere mention will open the door to any audition — but who among us does not still immediately flash to eldest brother Macaulay as an 8-year-old doing the “Home Alone” face?
For years, the two younger brothers cheerfully rode the Culkin gravy train, playing various versions of each other, or being cast as newer-model Macaulays. But suddenly they’re not kiddie actors anymore — they’re shaggy, good-looking young guys who seem more Wes Anderson than John Hughes.
In “Lymelife,” they finally work together — playing brothers, no less. As Scott Bartlett, Rory’s a picked-on high schooler who psyches himself up in his bedroom mirror but has trouble translating his bravado into real life.
Kieran, as his older brother on a visit home from the military, defends Scott against bullies but still relishes a little sibling torment himself.
“The scene where he slaps me in the face — that wasn’t in the script or anything,” says 19-year-old Rory, who still retains a bit of a teenage mumble. “He just kind of went for it. Derick [Martini, the director and co-writer] loved that s – – t. He would whisper in his ear and tell him to beat me up.”
Kieran, 26, does not deny the amount of enjoyment he got from this.
“Well, they didn’t yell ‘cut,’ ” he says, laughing. “I saw him rubbing his eye, of course I’m gonna hit him there. If he were to say to me, ‘Ow, I really banged my finger,’ I’d flick his finger. It’s just instinct. That’s
what you do.”
Plus, says Kieran, you have no choice but to keep it real when you’re acting alongside a sibling.
“Your bulls – – t meter is turned way up. You can’t let anything slip by. I’ll say something, and I’ll catch him looking at me, and I’ll be like, ‘Aw, you know I’m full of
s – – t right now.’ “
Kieran’s got the easier deal in this film; it’s Rory who has to pull off the fumbling loss-of-virginity scene. “It was pretty awkward,” he admits of filming the scene with Emma Roberts, who plays the girl next door. “She was a sport about it. We rehearsed it once or twice and then we, uh, made magic,” he says with a laugh.
“I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it feels like you’re in the room with them and you shouldn’t be,” says Kieran, who had his own experience with on-camera groping in 2002’s “Igby Goes Down.” “I don’t know if that’s any more so because he’s my brother, but it really feels like you’re in the closet peeking at them. It makes you uncomfortable.”
In real life, though, the Culkins seem totally comfortable — except, perhaps, with the idea of a little brotherly competition: At the last minute, they declined to do this interview as a team.