Marv from ‘Home Alone’ has a new calling card: Tangerines and sculpture

The end of the year may be associated with the holiday season for many, but Daniel Stern refers to it as something else: the “Home Alone” time.

Stern, 67, best known for playing one of the not-so-wily Wet Bandits in the movie, has been an actor in Hollywood for more than 40 years. These days he is a prolific bronze sculptor and helps around his family’s ranch and citrus orchard in Ventura County, California, where he dazzles his six grandchildren with the trademark physical comedy he used in two “Home Alone” movies, as well as in “City Slickers” and “Bushwhacked.”

But you probably know him better as Marv.

The buffoonish yin to the scheming yang of Harry (Joe Pesci), the two taunt and rob an affluent Chicago neighborhood during Christmastime in “Home Alone,” only to be thwarted by 8-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) and his booby traps. The movie, and its sequel, quickly became part of the Christmas movie canon.

“Home Alone” has remained a classic through generations, something Stern finds “mind-boggling” and “humbling.” But fans from the 1990s are now enthralled by a different kind of storytelling: Stern is documenting daily life on his farm on social media, bringing his Instagram and TikTok followers along for his tangerine harvest and juicing, and offering a behind-the-scenes look at his art studio.

Many fans have been delighted to discover their favorite childhood villain showing off his favorite high-powered juicer and obsessing over sculpture molds. Some have given him a new nickname: the Citrus Bandit.

“My son said to me: ‘You’re a seasonal superstar. Every year you come around,’ ” Stern recalled.

But this year felt more personal. His son Henry Stern, 42, told him: “If they’re liking the tangerine juice, they like you, Dad. They’re liking what you do, not your characters.”

Stern has been posting videos from the ranch, which he shares with his wife, Laure Mattos, for over a year. Her family members have been California ranchers since the 1800s. But he guessed that as Christmas movie season revved up, so, too, would searches for “What happened to that guy?”

Still, Stern said, the new interest has “tickled” him.

“That’s the reason why I put it out there,” he said of the art and life on the farm. “The final step of any artistic project is giving it to people to see or to react to.”

Stern has been a bit overwhelmed by the popularity of his videos (two have hovered around 2 million views each), but that feeling is nothing new. He had difficulty accepting adoration in the past, he said, when he went from being a working actor to a household name with “Home Alone” and “City Slickers.” He also provided the adult voice of Kevin Arnold in “The Wonder Years.”

“I need to take everybody’s love in that way, and it just gets a little overwhelming,” he said. “What a crazy way to walk through life, to be a little part of people’s lives.”

And now they have a better glimpse into his.

Stern usually starts his day with a walk around the orchard or neighboring farms, after which he heads to his art studio, where he remains until dinnertime. He started to take sculpting seriously about 25 years ago and now works primarily with bronze. He began applying for public art projects. “It was about telling the community story.”

His goal is to make the sculptures “climb-on-able,” he said. “I want people to interact with them.”

”My dream – and it works out – is people get in front of the camera and pose,” he said. “As we speak, people are walking by those sculptures, sitting there taking pictures. That’s satisfying to me.”

His favorite piece is a sculpture of an unnamed director that he made for the city of Monrovia, California, to honor the film history of the San Gabriel Valley town.

Despite being afraid of heights, Stern recently completed 8-foot totems depicting the lives of a man and a woman. He sculpted the works from foam, turning them into four stacked figures. When it came time to send the sculptures for casting, foundry workers had to cut them into 15 pieces. It took him seven months to sculpt, and the bronze foundry five months to mold and cast.

After the whirlwind of ’90s stardom, Stern has happily settled into life on the range, which he described as “heaven.” He does not pursue acting full time the way he used to, though he has had some recurring roles on the television series “Shrill” and “For All Mankind.”

That has allowed for other creative pursuits, like his art and the memoir he published this year, “Home and Alone,” a nod to how he prefers to spend his days. He is also working on a musical with CeeLo Green based on the 1984 horror movie “CHUD,” in which Stern starred. He is also shopping around his own Christmas movie, a dark comedy.

Stern said he had not seen “Home Alone” since it premiered in 1990 and doesn’t rewatch many movies.

But that may have changed. Recently, he rewatched “The Wizard of Oz” for the first time since seeing it on a black-and-white set as a child. Witnessing the change from grayscale to vibrant color once Dorothy and Toto step foot in Oz gave him a new appreciation for it.

“I was glowing,” Stern said. He also thought: “Some people look at the ‘Home Alone’ movie and they hold that movie in their heart like ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”

Stern, who is Jewish, finds the magic of the holiday season in his own way. When his three children were little and complained about not celebrating Christmas, he offered an alternative.

“We don’t have Santa Claus, but we do have Hanukkah Harry,” he told them, getting inspiration from a “Saturday Night Live” character made famous by Jon Lovitz. Stern’s kids were all-in, writing to Hanukkah Harry and getting letters back (from Stern). In their household, Hanukkah Harry would give the children gifts that they would pass on to people in need.

One year Hanukkah Harry filled the entire living room with canned food. Another year there was a scavenger hunt with a design not entirely different from that of young Kevin McCallister. The final stage involved turning on the ceiling fan, where $1,000 worth of $1 bills had been carefully placed. The children then got to choose a charity or person to donate the money to.

Stern would neither confirm nor deny if Hanukkah Harry would be making an appearance this year.

The gifting tradition may not be what you’d expect from a former Wet Bandit, who Stern insists had some good to him.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “It was Harry! He was the bad guy. I was an innocent.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.