Daniel Stern recalls Joe Pesci biting Macaulay Culkin in ‘Home Alone’

The Wet Bandits weren’t messin’ around.

Daniel Stern, who played bumbling burglar Marv in Home Alone, recently reflected on filming the holiday classic, even recalling when Joe Pesci accidentally bit young Macaulay Culkin’s finger while shooting one of the movie’s intimidation scenes.

“I totally forgot about that,” Stern said when asked about the scene in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight. “Joe is… he’s wonderful, I love him, he’s a dear friend, but he’s a scary dude, and he was carrying it all. ‘Cause he was — we were trying in the first movie to actually be scary to start with, and then you realize we’re idiots. But there was a fear factor that set up the drama of the thing.”

The actor said his Oscar-winning costar, who played Marv’s partner in crime Harry in the 1990 movie, immediately expressed regret over the incident. “Yeah, I think he did bite it as he was biting his finger, and then he bit it — like, ‘Oh crap, I didn’t really mean to,'” Stern recalled. “Joe was like, ‘Ahh, sorry I did that.’ But only time you might see Pesci break.”

Culkin, who played the film’s lead character, Kevin McAllister, recently revealed that he still bears a mark from his toothsome encounter with the Goodfellas star. “I have a scar,” he said during a recent Q&A about Home Alone at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, Ill., reported The New York Times. “I saw his face — and I’ve never, ever seen Joe Pesci actually scared… because he’s like, ‘I just bit a kid!'”

Elsewhere in the ET interview, Stern shared his memories of working with one of Kevin McAllister’s most horrifying home-security measures: a live tarantula. “I was kind of in a groove at that point of doing crazy things, so when I showed up on the set to do the spider thing, I thought … ‘Let’s see what happens. I’m sure they’re gonna have a great prop spider,'” he said. “And they didn’t. They had a real spider that the wrangler told me, ‘He’s not gonna bite you. You’ll be fine.'”

Stern was cool with working alongside the arachnid. “So I went, you know, ‘Okay, do it,'” he said. “So they put the spider on me and I let him crawl around on my face for about five minutes, just so we both got used to each other. And then we just rolled the camera.”

The actor also speculated why Home Alone has remained an enduring Christmas classic. “I think the kids love the power that that kid [Kevin] has, and the parents love seeing the kid have that power,” he said. “There’s so much heart in it. It’s so funny. You know, I think we’re really funny… and it’s got a great holiday, Christmassy feel to it. But I think the thing that really stands out is the kid getting us. Everybody wants that kid to win. It’s a kid-empowerment movie.”

The McAllisters’ home-turned-fortress recently made headlines after the film location hit the market and found a new buyer just in time for the holiday season. The massive five-bedroom house in Winnetka, Ill. — which boasts a movie theater, a gym, and an indoor sport-court — sold for $5,250,000 in less than a week after it was listed.

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Culkin contemplated purchasing the home himself earlier this month. “I had half a mind to buy it — just for giggles,” he said at the Q&A at the Rosemont Theater. He didn’t pull the trigger, though. “I got kids,” he said. “I’m busy, man.”