Michael Jackson famously had a very close relationship with Macaulay Culkin.

And the former child star once revealed that the musician actually phoned him after watching Home Alone:

With them both being two of the biggest names on the planet at the time, and many years between them, a lot has been made of their relationship.

Whenever Culkin was interviewed, he was often asked about Jackson and his trips to Neverland.

But how did they become so close?

Well, according to Culkin, Jackson, who he’d met previously while performing in a theater production, just called him up.

“I first met him, he kind of called me randomly, like, out of the blue, he was just kind of like, ‘Hi, it’s Michael’, and I’m like, ‘Hey’,” Culkin recalled in an interview with Larry King years later.

“This was after Home Alone. I’d actually met him once before when I was doing The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, I was playing Fritz, and he came backstage one day and I actually met him very briefly.

Macaulay Culkin was close with Michael Jackson. Credit: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

“And he kind of recognised me because it was after I’d done Uncle Buck.”

In another interview, Culkin discussed the surprise phone call he received from Jacko, with the singer asking him if he wanted to come and see him.

“Yeah, he reached out to me, because a lot of things were happening like, you know, big and fast with me, and I think yes, I think yeah he identified with that,” the actor recalled.

“And then he calls me up kind of out of the blue, it’s kind of just this weird, random thing. He was like, ‘Why don’t you come over to my house?’ ”

In an interview on Marc Maron’s podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, Culkin opened up further about his first meeting with MJ.

“He came backstage before the show,” 42-year-old said. “He loved dance, he was a dance man. He came backstage with Donald Trump, because they were friendly back then.

Culkin was just 10 when he starred in Home Alone. Credit: 20th Century Studios

“I remember he looked at me like, ‘I know you from somewhere. ‘Oh, Uncle Buck, yeah, you’re funny’.”

And while rumours have circulated for years that Jackson, who was subsequently accused of abuse by a number of children who stayed with him at Neverland, may have been inappropriate with Culkin.

However, he was adamant that ‘nothing happened’.

Speaking in a new interview with Esquire, he said: “Look, I’m gonna begin with the line-it’s not a line, it’s the truth: He never did anything to me.

“I never saw him do anything. And especially at this flashpoint in time, I’d have no reason to hold anything back. The guy has passed on.”