Daniel Stern felt "very protective" of Macaulay Culkin on the set of 'Home Alone'

Speaking on ITV's 'Good Morning Britain', he explained: "He was a professional actor, [childhood] what you give up a lot of times when you're working as a kid. He also lived in New York. I love him, I loved him then. He was the same age as one of my kids and I felt very protective of him.

"We all went to the park to play. He did things my kids didn't do but he was under the microscope."

Following his rise to fame in 'Home Alone', Macaulay acted in films such as 'My Girl' and 'The Pagemaster' before returning for 'Home Alone 2: Lost In New York' and later retired from acting in pursuit of a "normal life" away from Hollywood but made a comeback to the film scene in the early 2000s.

Daniel - who has just published his memoir 'Home and Alone' - noted that being a child star can be a "dangerous situation" because either a kid is going to be rejected several times over or they have to deal with an enormous amount of public scrutiny during their teenage years.

He said: "Being a kid actor is a dangerous situation. It's a lose-lose to me. Either you're gonna have a kid go out and audition for things and get rejected or they're in the movie or the show and it's a big success and now they're having their adolescence while everyone is paying too much attention to them. It's a minefield for adults."