Macaulay Culkin Acts His Age : Movies: The young star of ‘Home Alone,’ the holiday season’s first box-office smash, is a hot property. ‘I have to wear a ski mask,’ he laments as fans seek him out.

NEW YORK —  It is holiday time in the city--chilly and wet and busy--and on East 60th Street, clumps of children and their parents are crowding into a restaurant for one of the enduring rituals of the Manhattan shopping season: an order of frozen hot chocolate or apricot smush or some other such treat.

Inside the whimsical eatery called Serendipity, amid the gigantic bows and baubles and the glow of hundreds of red Christmas lights, little New Yorkers eagerly collect their payoff for forced marches through nearby shops. Today they get a bonus--a famous face in their midst, which intensifies the buzz among the young sophisticates.

At a corner table sits the object of attention, 10-year-old actor Macaulay (Mac) Culkin. He is unmoved by the commotion, his focus fixed on the hand-held Nintendo game he is playing.

It’s been only a week since the opening of Macaulay’s newest movie, “Home Alone,” a comedy in which he stars as a youngster accidentally left behind by his vacation-bound family. But for young Macaulay, it was the week that promises to change his life.

It started when “Home Alone” earned a chart-topping $17 million its first weekend out, instantly making Macaulay and his movie the hot properties of the holiday movie season.

Suddenly, the boy is being mobbed at clothing stores, the television networks are after him for production deals and movie directors are figuring ways to nab him for talks while he’s in Los Angeles today for an “Arsenio Hall Show” appearance. Across Manhattan and the nation, children and parents are lining up to see Macaulay’s movie, some for the third or fourth time. And inside Serendipity, there are moments like this:

A stylishly dressed mother approaches Macaulay, dispatched, she says, by her two young daughters at a table nearby.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you, but I just wanted to tell you we saw your movie,” says the mother, gesturing toward her girls, who are seated backwards in their chairs for a better view of the young star. The girls beam. Macaulay smiles. “It was fabulous,” the woman continues. “My little girls, well, we just loved it.” Macaulay smiles again and thanks her, then returns to his interview.

The kid is hot. “I need a ski mask,” he laments as he consoles himself with a sundae that resembles the Matterhorn.

But if any 10-year-old could handle the pressure of sudden fame in a media-intensive town such as this, it should certainly be Macaulay Culkin, a native New Yorker who almost seems born to the job. Most of the Culkin clan acts. Macaulay’s aunt is Bonnie Bedelia. Macaulay’s father, Christopher Culkin, acted in the theater.

The Culkin family was involved in the theater the way other families take up soccer. One family ritual was its participation in strike-the-set nights at the Light Opera of Manhattan, when even the youngest members of the family would pitch in to help dismantle a set and make way for an incoming production. Afterward, the Culkin children and their friends would play hide-and-seek or tag in the darkened theater.

Christopher Culkin’s theater connections were soon recruiting his children for productions, and one step led to the next. “We didn’t say, ‘Let’s go out and get agents.’ In fact we have yet to go to acting school,” says the senior Culkin, a soft-spoken man who lunches with Macaulay and two of his other children at Serendipity. “It was really an after-school thing that got out of hand.” His children’s careers forced Christopher Culkin’s retirement from acting. Two years ago, the family (which includes five boys and two girls) had three children in different stage productions in New York. “You should have seen us on matinee day,” the elder Culkin recalls.

Macaulay started acting at age 4, and recalls that it was “just fun.” At 6, his performance in “Afterschool Special” at the Ensemble Studio Theatre was favorably noticed by the New York critics. In his first movie, “Rocket Gibraltar,” he starred opposite Burt Lancaster. He also had a role in Alan Pakula’s “See You in the Morning.” The young actor got his first taste of widespread public recognition last year, however, after appearing as John Candy’s inquisitive nephew, Miles, in John Hughes’ “Uncle Buck.”

Macaulay says a kid followed him home from school one day, wanting to know if he really lived with Candy. “I said, ‘Yes. He’s upstairs microwaving my socks right now,’ ” says Macaulay, pleased with his reference to one of the movie’s well-known gags.

His work in “Uncle Buck” led to his starring role in “Home Alone,” which was also written by Hughes with the young actor in mind. Macaulay plays a resourceful and ingenious youngster who must fend for himself and thwart a pair of bumbling burglars when his family inadvertently leaves him behind in their dash to Europe. The 20th Century Fox production also stars Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, Catherine O’Hara and John Heard.

But it is Macaulay’s performance that has been singled out. Even critics who have not been enthusiastic about the film praise the boy’s work, particularly because he has no other actor to play off of through most of the film.

Macaulay, who doesn’t expand much when talking about himself, says it wasn’t such a difficult role. “I just asked the director (Chris Columbus) how I should do it, and when I should do it, really.”

Macaulay is currently working in a supporting role in Columbus’ next feature, “Only the Lonely,” starring John Candy. Macaulay and his 8-year-old brother Kieran, who also appeared in “Home Alone” as cousin Fuller, play--ironically--brothers.

They have about five days of shooting left, which will be completed before Macauley, Kieran, and their parents leave for a publicity tour of European capitals next month for the overseas opening of “Home Alone.”

Usually at this time of year, Macaulay is appearing as a featured dancer in “The Nutcracker” with the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. He says he misses that holiday ritual.

But for now he’s on top of the world. He owes it, he says, to a movie that brings to life “every boy or girl’s dream, to be left home and to get to do whatever they want.”

Sundae and interview completed, the star leaves the restaurant with his entourage and steps into another all-American kids’ fantasy, a chauffeured black limousine, which drives him off to his next date with fame.