Kieran Culkin Says Sister's Death Felt Like 'Losing a Big Piece of Myself'

Kieran Culkin

Kieran Culkin is still navigating the loss of his sister, Dakota “Cody” Culkin, more than a decade after her death.

“I only knew who I was because of who my siblings are,” Kieran, 42, said on the Sunday, November 3, episode of CBS Sunday Morning. “So, to lose one was losing a big piece of myself. Losing one of my favorite people in the world, it doesn’t get easier. But you get used to it.”

Kieran and Dakota are two of Kit Culkin and Patricia Brentrup’s seven children. The former spouses also share Macaulay Culkin, Rory Culkin, Quinn Culkin, Shane Culkin and Christian Culkin. (Kit also shared daughter Jennifer, who died in 2000 following an overdose, with ex Adeena VanWagoner.)

Dakota died at age 29 after she was struck and killed in a 2008 car accident, and now remains a frequent memory for her siblings. Macaulay, 44, and fiancée Brenda Song named their eldest son in her honor. Kieran, for his part, partially modeled his Succession character after Dakota.

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“After a couple seasons on Succession, I realized there was some stuff that Roman did that I was like, ‘Oh, that’s my sister. That was her sense of humor,’” Kieran, who played Roman on the series, added on CBS Sunday Morning. “She could find exactly what the right thing to make fun of you was that would get to you, but be really funny and make the room laugh. That was her.”

Elsewhere during the interview, Kieran detailed their joint childhood in New York City before he and brother Macaulay started acting.

“I remember my mom baking a cake and it would come out slanted because the whole apartment was on a slant,” Kieran recalled. “We used to put [toy] cars on one end of the kitchen and let go and see them roll! We lived in a tight space where it was just seven of us running around. It was like a sort of little wolf-pack mentality.”

They lived in a four-bedroom apartment in the Big Apple.

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“Whenever the door would open to let the kids in, I used to stand aside and make sure, and I used to count to make sure all six of them got in before I got in,” Kieran added. “That’s how I remember growing up, too, was I couldn’t fall asleep until they all fell asleep. Like, I only existed because they did around me.”

The A Real Pain actor now lives in Los Angeles with wife Jazz Charton and their two children.

“Oh, man, everything — Everything except dinnertime,” he mused of his favorite parts of fatherhood. “Dinnertime’s a terror. I’ve seen some kids sit and eat dinner, it’s great. My kids sit and eat breakfast, they’ll eat lunch, but dinner is just throwing things around the house, and it’s very stressful.”