Judo Olympian and Home Alone actor Hillary Wolf couldn't stop judo

Almost each year around Christmas she is the most searched judoka at JudoInside. American judoka and actress Hillary Wolf won the Junior world title in 1994 in Cairo as first American. Moreover she was world famous as a child acting in Home Alone and Big Girls don’t cry. She qualified for the Olympic Games twice. Now she is a mother, Hillary Wolf finally appreciates the combination.

I had started practicing judo when I was 7 and continued the whole time I was acting. Judo instantly became my passion, which probably explains why acting was never really my priority.

I have no recollection of this, but my mom has told me that John Hughes, who wrote Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, actually met me when I was much younger, so I think that helped me get the role of Megan McCallister, an older sister to Macaulay Culkin's Kevin McCallister.

Home Alone was filmed in the Chicago area so I got to stay home, sleep in my own bed and only had to drive 30 minutes to set each morning, but to this day, my mom still says that she probably wouldn't have said yes if it hadn't been a John Hughes movie. The concept of a kid at home on his own sounds kind of ridiculous on paper. We had no idea it was going to be the hit that it was.

As a whole, my memories of Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York are that it was a very fun set. Between the McCallisters and the cousins there were a lot of children, so it was a very kid-friendly environment. Catherine O'Hara was one of the best things about that movie set. She was funny, great with kids, and just a wonderful person. I actually had a lot of fun filming the scene we did running through O'Hare airport, and that was because I was with Catherine.

Once the movie came out and did so well, I think Home Alone 2 started getting planned pretty quickly and was filmed the following year, in 1991. We stayed at The Plaza hotel in New York for several weeks and shot the New York scenes, but everything else was shot on set in the Chicago area, even the scenes where we are on an airplane.

Macaulay was still a kid though, he was completely the same and I remember going to hang out with him and his siblings who were all staying at a hotel in Chicago. His little brother Kieran Culkin was the cutest; I loved him.

My very first kiss in real life was actually with Macaulay Culkin's older brother, Shane, who was around my age. It was one of the times we were all hanging out in Chicago. As I was having my first kiss, Macaulay was army crawling out of a hotel room into the hall, trying to see what was going on! He was a little prankster. I have two sons of my own now and I'd say Macaulay was just a normal boy.

We'd hang out with Macaulay's bodyguard as our chaperone and go to Navy Pier in Chicago and lip sync to music videos. Macaulay had been in Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video by that point, and I remember we did the dance and lip synced to that, which was really fun.

After the Home Alone movies, I did get recognized a little, but the movie people really recognized me for was Big Girls Don't Cry...They Get Even which was released between Home Alone and Home Alone 2. It was a movie that a lot of girls my age saw, even though Home Alone was much more popular. It was interesting because acting wasn't my ultimate goal, so I did the best I could and then I went back home and went to the same school. Movies and judo were just what I did. I was totally comfortable and the other kids at my school were used to it.

Throughout the time I was filming movies, I was also still practicing judo and competing around the country. I rarely lost so when the 1991 U.S. National Judo Championships in Hawaii were approaching, my dad said we should go. I thought he was insane, but we went and I won in the under 44kg weight class, even though I was 14 and fighting women who were 30. That was a big turning point for me because I began thinking that by '96 I could be ready to compete in the Olympics in Atlanta.

In 1994 I won the World Junior Judo Championships in my weight class, becoming the first American to do so. It was a huge accomplishment. The next American to win was actually Ronda Rousey in 2004. By '96 I was competing at my first Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. It was an incredible experience. Having an Olympics in your own country is just amazing; virtually everyone in the stadium is American and cheering for you.

I didn't end up placing but I enjoyed it a lot, and afterwards I finally moved up to the under 52kg weight class. But I tore my ACL in 1998, which required surgery, so the chances of recovering and making it to the next Olympics were slim.

Simply making the U.S. Olympic team in 2000 was a huge accomplishment for me, but I didn't have the greatest experience in Sydney. I was four years older and it felt a little more final. I knew I could have made the Olympics team in 2004, but I wasn't going to get a medal without training overseas. I had met my husband Chris by that point—he's a wrestler and was an Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling alternate twice, for the '96 and 2000 U.S. Olympic wrestling teams—so when I stepped off the mat in Sydney, I was done.

There hasn't been a single moment when I have regretted my decision to quit acting, but sports was a little tougher to close the door on. It's weird when athletics is your passion; you still have the heart for it but at some point your body can't do it any more. And when I retired I probably could have competed for a while longer.

There are people who have known me for years and have no idea about the movie stuff and I could just pretend that it didn't happen. But being a child actor and then an Olympic athlete is who I am. Now, I feel I'm able to appreciate it.