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Trust the Kieran Culkin Process


First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.

He uncovered that instinct as a part of the brief but powerful Culkin Child-Actor Dynasty in blazingly earnest ’90s films like The Mighty and The Cider House Rules and Father of the Bride, sharpened it as a teen in artier fare like Igby Goes Down and The ­Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, and most recently and famously perfected it on HBO’s Succession as sad perverted clown Roman Roy. That night, he and I meet up at a Gramercy steakhouse whose interior is emblazoned with a gigantic sign that reads “Beef and Liberty,” the sort of place that the Roman Roys of the world might ­conspicuously snort cocaine off a leather banquette and where, across the street, the entire Lohan family is dining outside. We order dirty martinis — “Very, very, very dry, barely any vermouth” — and Culkin deliberates for a very long time about which steak to choose, asking the waiter pointed questions about its provenance before landing on a huge bone-in so he can take the rest home for his family.

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