'Home Alone' star hired to recreate iconic scene from Christmas...

'Home Alone' star hired to recreate iconic scene from Christmas...
Source: New York Post

"Home Alone" star Daniel Stern has been commissioned to create a statue of his most iconic scene for the new owners of the house featured in the classic holiday flick.

"I got a call from the people who own the 'Home Alone' house," Stern, 68, told People during an interview published Wednesday. "And I'm a sculptor, they asked if I would do a sculpture for the house. So I'm creating a sculpture of me and the spider."
"Which is gonna be kind of crazy," he continued. "So it'll be at the 'Home Alone' house so that spider, whatever his name was, Charlie, is being immortalized in bronze."

Stern, who was hospitalized following a health scare in October, starred as Marv alongside Joe Pesci's Harry in "Home Alone" and its 1992 sequel.

The pair called themselves the Wet Bandits and attempted to rob the home of Macaulay Culkin's Kevin McCallister after his family accidentally left him home alone in Chicago during a Christmas vacation to Paris, France.

However, Kevin sets up a series of elaborate traps to thwart Harry and Marv's robbery plans - including letting loose a tarantula that eventually lands on Marv's face in one of the movie's most iconic scenes.

Stern, who has since left Hollywood for a ranch in Ventura, California, to focus on his art, also revealed that the sculpture will be his first self-portrait.

"I've been looking at myself in my studio, and I've made myself a lot handsomer than I actually am in real life," he shared. "Just why not?"
"It's been fun though," the "For All Mankind" star added. "It's been really fun, and you know it was so sweet to think of it. I mean, it'll be done in a couple of months, but it's so sweet to think of it in that house."

But while he expects to finish the sculpture sometime early next year, Stern does not plan to drop it off himself.

"I'm going to ship it," he told the outlet. "It would be crazy to be in [the house.] That house is like a tourist attraction."

The home, located in Winnetka, Illinois, was used for exterior shots of Chris Columbus' 1990 holiday classic.

Although a man named John Abendshien lived in the famous house for more than two decades, he reportedly sold the property for $1.6 million in 2012.

The house received a major makeover in 2018 and was placed back on the market in May 2024 with an asking price of $5.25 million.

It sold less than one week later for $5.5 million, and project manager Scott Price recently told NBC Chicago that the new owners plan to launch a massive renovation to restore the property to how it looked in "Home Alone."

"Our vision is to bring back the warmth and just the love from the movie," Prince told the outlet earlier this month. "There [were] so many great colors, and it just made you feel like family and like home, and we want to bring that magic back."

As for his iconic scene with Charlie the tarantula, Stern revealed that his hilarious screaming reaction was "an homage to the woman in 'Psycho' in the shower."

The "Whip It" star added that there was a "tarantula trainer" on set to oversee the sequence, although it was unclear how trained the spider actually was.

"I'm like,'How did you train him?'" Stern recalled. "He said,'We can't really train him,' and I'm like,'OK,well,you know,is he gonna care that I scream at him?'and he's like,'He can't hear.'"
"And I'm like 'OK.Well ... Should we take the stinger out?'"the "Home Alone" star continued."And he said,'If we take the stinger out,he'll die.'And I said,'But if you don't,then I'll die.'"