He is best known for his role as Elliott's brother Michael in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, for which he won a 1982 Young Artist Award as Best Young Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture.
MacNaughton also played the lead role of Adam Farmer in the 1983 film I Am the Cheese, based on the young adult novel by Robert Cormier.
MacNaughton retired from acting in 2002. He then worked as a mail carrier in Phoenix, Arizona, and Jersey City, New Jersey. In 2013, MacNaughton returned to acting, performing in two films, Kamal Ahmed's Laugh Killer Laugh (co-starring his wife, Bianca Hunter) and Damien Leone's Frankenstein vs. The Mummy.
