Actor told Columbia’s head of marketing that the film’s scene showing the death of Culkin, then 10, was going to freak out every child in the US

Jamie Lee Curtis has said she asked the studio behind the 1991 comedy-drama My Girl to put a trigger warning on the poster, owing to the dramatic death of its central character towards the end of the film.

Speaking on The View, Curtis, 67, said she was sufficiently concerned by the incongruously perky publicity materials for the movie to phone the studio’s head of marketing.

“I called the president of marketing at Columbia,” she told Whoopi Goldberg, “and I said: ‘Guys, you have a poster of the biggest star in the world, Macaulay Culkin, and this little girl laughing on the cover of the poster.’ I said: ‘You have to put a warning. You have to say [there are] issues of life and death explored in this film, because this little boy is going to die on film and you’re going to see him dead in a coffin and you’re going to freak out every child in America!’”

In the film, Curtis plays the mortician at the funeral home owned by the family of a young girl played by Anna Chlumsky. She befriends an unpopular bespectacled boy played by Culkin, who was then 10 and already a household name due to the success of Home Alone, which was released the previous year.

Culkin’s character has a number of allergies and, shortly after the children share a first kiss, is fatally attacked by a swarm of bees. Last week, the actor revealed that the scene was shot using hundreds of real bees.

Speaking on the On Film … with Kevin McCarthy podcast, Culkin said: “They put this stuff on my fingertips that smells like the queen bee so [the bees] were actually attracted to my hands and I wasn’t a threat.

“They actually released thousands of bees on me, imagine that! I’m not joking, those are real bees. That would not fly today.”

He added that he was instructed to “wave my hands in front of my face so the bees can get in front of my face and it looks good for the camera”. As soon as they stopped filming, he was advised to “soap my hands in hot water and then dart into the woods.

“The bee handler gave me a piece of advice, he said: ‘Human beings run faster than bees fly.’ I was like, ‘but I’m 10. How fast do you think I am?’”

The film, which was rated PG, was a huge box office success, making $121m worldwide and spawning a sequel.

Goldberg alluded to the trauma inflicted on some of the audience, saying: “That’s not to say they didn’t freak the kids out.” Curtis agreed, adding: “I think today it would have had a warning label.”