It’s hard to believe that the coming-of-age movie “My Girl” came out 25 years ago. Anna Chlumsky, in her first starring role, played hypochondriac Vada Sultenfuss opposite Macaulay Culkin, already famous for “Home Alone.” The film set in the summer of 1972 also starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd. Read on to learn 10 facts about “My Girl,” as collected by TheWrap in partnership with IMDb.
Anna Chlumsky said Jaime Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd gave her acting tips while making the movie. The two actors taught her: “put yourself in other people’s shoes, always focus, silent screams and tiny face.”
Anna Chlumsky and Macaulay Culkin appeared in another movie together before they both headlined “My Girl.” Chlumsky was an extra in the 1989 John Hughes comedy “Uncle Buck” (far left), in which Culkin played the nephew of John Candy and Gaby Hoffmann (far right) played his niece.
The past connections for the cast didn’t end there: Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis first appeared together in the 1983 comedy “Trading Places,” also starring Eddie Murphy.
Both young actors were around the age of 10 at the time they both performed their first onscreen kiss. “It was like, fifteen takes. All angles. Yeeecchhhkkk,” Culkin said in an interview at the time of the film’s release. “We just wanted to get it over with,” Chlumsky said on “Regis and Kathie Lee” around the same time.
“My mom [said], ‘Well, picture me in that casket,’” Anna Chlumsky explained years later of how she got into the right mindset for the film’s saddest moment.
“Kids say lines right because they’re in it,” she said of her big emotional scene, arguing that children can’t help being truthful.
Chlumsky also explained how she learned to cry on cue as she promoted the film back in 1991: She would prepare for up to an hour before the big scene and think of sad things. “My mom would help me prepare,” she said on a talk show.
Chlumsky said she wasn’t really star-struck when she met Culkin, even though she was aware of his “Home Alone” fame. “He was just one of my friends,” she said in a behind-the-scenes video for the film.
The title of the film’s original screenplay was “Born Jaundiced.” Naturally, filmmakers and studio heads knew they could do better.
Jamie Lee Curtis instituted a swear can on set for “trucker talk,” Dan Aykroyd said during an appearance on “The Arsenio Hall Show” with Chlumsky. “$5 dollars for this word, $10 for another word. By end of the movie, the kids had about $5 grand in there!”
Culkin pulled a lot of pranks on the set. Once he put double-stick tape that he got from the wardrobe department onto a toilet in the on-set school trailer. He managed to catch both a tutor and Chlumsky.
Discover more “My Girl” trivia, goofs and quotes on IMDb.