The actor who played Buzz McCallister in the hit 1990 film Home Alone and its 1992 sequel, Devin Ratray, was accused of assaulting his girlfriend after an altercation between the two turned violent.
Ratray, 44, and his girlfriend were recently in a hotel in Oklahoma City when he allegedly tried to strangle her. The woman filed a police report, and authorities gave Ratray a ticket for assault and battery, but he wasn’t arrested.
Ratray’s girlfriend said he “beat the crap out of her,” according to a report the girlfriend gave the police. She said that in addition to the strangling, he put his hand over his mouth while they were arguing, and she bit it. Then he punched her in the face, she said in the police report, and she ran to a stairwell to escape him.
Ratray said they argued and broke up, but nothing was physical between them.
Ratray is best known as Kevin McCallister’s older brother Buzz in the popular movies, and he even reprised the character in Home Sweet Home Alone, a Disney Plus reboot of the franchise.
In the latest movie, Ratray plays Buzz as a cop who tells his fellow officers to ignore calls about kids left at home during the holiday season.
“[Kevin] called in the 289 to mess with me. The idiot does it every year,” he says in the movie.
Ratray said he was extremely excited to bring the character back to life.
“People either know me right away or they find out after knowing me for some time. It can be quite a surprise. I don’t look the same as I did when I was 13,” Ratray said about appearing in the first movie. “Chris [Columbus] encouraged me to explore the material. If I felt like throwing in a line or improvising, he wanted me to do that so he could get a better sense of who I was. He made me feel at ease and very comfortable and I walked out feeling quite relaxed. It was a pretty good experience in terms of an auditioning process and just a total joy when I got the part.”
The Buzz character allowed him to expand on the characters he was playing in other projects, which were mostly bullies, he said.
“Maybe [Columbus] felt that he could work with someone who didn’t come across as nervous on camera. I don’t know what it was but I’m just grateful that I got it. … Up until then, I had played either nerds or bullies — both ends of the spectrum — but playing the bad guy is always more fun, and playing a nasty, surly, rude teenage bastard like Buzz was great.”
If you or someone you know is suffering from domestic violence, contact The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE.
