"The mystery of Molly Ringwald, the 80s star who abandoned her career because of ‘the other Weinsteins’"

She worked for James "Fingers" Toback. Enough said.

R1 She said it happened when she was 14. She was older than that when she worked with Toback.

Sixteen Candles was shot when she was 14-it was shot in the summer of 1983 and she turned 15 that fall.

When did Warren Beatty take an interest in her? I think it was pretty early on.

She had a brief but showy appearance in an episode of that show "The Bear" about the Chicago chef. She played a woman speaking at an al-anon meeting. I didn't realize it was her until the end credits but as I was watching her scene, I remember thinking wow, this actress is good!

She was extremely de-glammed and definitely looked her age, which respect.

Did this girl even graduate from Eastland?

I didn't recognize her in Monster until I went to look up another character to see who the actor was and saw her on IMDB. Same with Penelope Ann Miller.

In one of the later episodes she was more recognizable, but early in the series she wasn't recognizable at all. In part because of the big 80s glasses.

I know this is a Molly Ringwald thread but I didn’t know John Hughes was such an asshole, were jokes about eugenics common in the 1970s?

[quote]The relationship between Ringwald and Hughes was very close, almost symbiotic, for several years. In the piece, the actress says that he wrote the script for 16 Candles in a weekend after seeing a photo of the then 15-year-old in her agent’s office. He took the photo home, pinned it to the wall and wrote the story inspired by her face… [bold]in 1987 the actress turned down the role Hughes had created for her in Some Kind of Wonderful. She wanted to do different things. The director took it poorly. He cut off almost all contact from then on.[/bold] He passed away in 2009 at just 59 years of age.

[…]

[quote]But although she acknowledges that her career would have been very different had she not crossed paths with Hughes, today she does not feel particularly proud of those films. Nor has she watched them with her children. Today, she wrote in The New Yorker, they “could also be considered racist, misogynistic, and, at times, homophobic.”

[…]

[quote]the texts that the author published in the 1970s for the satirical magazine National Lampoon. The actress recounts how she came to buy old issues of the magazine on eBay, to discover with horror texts by Hughes that made fun of sexual harassment, violence against women and [bold]eugenics.[/bold]

I think I solved it!

She turned 14 in February 1982. Spacehunter, Ringwald's second film started filming in October 1982. The director, Lamont Johnson was indeed married at the time.

I have a list of names, I just need a little support from you to make it public. This time for real, Please check my Patron, GoFundMe or Pay pal. Thanks

I loved Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. I mean, it's TERRIBLE, but also really a fun movie.

The original director was Jean LaFleur, but he was fired after two weeks, and replaced with Lamont Johnson. I don't know what his marital status was, but could have been him.

John Hughes made extra hours of footage of the Breakfast Club kids doing other scenes that didn't make the film.

He seems like a major creeper for Molly.

R12 He always came off as really possessive of and obsessed with her.

Her career would have failed anyway post-Hughes. Awful actress, not charismatic, and not beautiful enough to make up for either of these things.

Her entire career was due to Reagan America's quintessential director John Hughes having an extremely creepy fixation on her. Anthony Michael Hall was much better in those glurgefest movies, but he decided to become a buffed up drunk, so that's why he tanked. There wasn't a single good actor in the Hughes films beyond him and James Spader. The rest all ranged from awful to passable.

Molly Ringwald and her CHEEZE DOODLE hair

Rex Reed ca. 1984

R3 She turned 16 in February '84 dumbass.

[quote]The rest all ranged from awful to passable

Mare Winningham's done o.k. for herself, r14.

R14 Oh shut up, she's wonderful in 16 Candles and especially Pretty in Pink.

[quote]There wasn't a single good actor in the Hughes films beyond him and James Spader. The rest all ranged from awful to passable.

This is mostly true for the brat pack movies (Emilio Estevez isn't bad) but not the other movies he directed or wrote like "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and "Home Alone," Steve Martin, John Candy and Catherine O'Hara have/had talent.

R17 I don't consider Mare to be really part of the Brat Pack for some reason. Even though she was around the age of Judd Nelson she seemed matronly. A lot of popular teen/young adult actors were actually around at the time (Diane Lane, Jodie Foster, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Cusack, Sean Penn, Matt Dillon, Nicolas Cage etc.) not part of it because they actually possessed baseline talent or starred in quality movies. RDJ was in Weird Science, but he seemed more in line with the independent group than the Brat Packers.

R19 When I talk about Hughes movies being dreck, I'm only talking about his teen films. He was a good director of general comedies and I agree he cast top rate talent for them.

[quote]Mare Winningham's done o.k. for herself

Was she in a John Hughes movie?

We know Joel wouldn't be interested in Molly.

R9 Lamont Johnson also directed the rape revenge thriller LIPSTICK with Hemingway sisters.

Kind of seems pervy

HELLO??? She was a garbage actress who sucked, big time! Once she was no longer a teen, Hollywood realized that her dayz were over. And good riddance! She sucked!

James Spader in Pretty in Pink was the best. Loved him.

Nice photo of her by Sheila Metzner for Vanity Fair in 1984.

[quote] There wasn't a single good actor in the Hughes films beyond him and James Spader.

Annie Potts, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Eric Stoltz. All three very good actors.

She also acted for John Cassavetes when she was 14

A film career she never deserved. The looks and talent were not there.

R20 Mare came off as matronly in St. Elmo’s Fire because she was pregnant during filming with her third child.

Third child by age 25? WHY?!?

The problem when people refuse to name the person who harassed them and instead drop hints is that it causes a witch hunt. So now Cassavetes fine name has been dragged into the guessing game… r29

I get Amy Madigan and Mare Winingham mixed up. They’re both sort of square-faced and mostly play drab roles.

R34 Then you never saw Mare’s early TV movie work, she was playing anything but drab, teen runaway prostitutes and rebellious children seeking emancipation.

I really have to disagree with you (i'm not her PR). She has had a very good career onstage, in bit parts, and singing (she comes from a singing background). She decided to go a different way other than the Hollywood machine. I don't fault her for that.

I always thought she was transcendentally beautiful with her red hair, light skin and freckles...and she was my same age.

Saw her on Broadway in Caberet, late 90s in NYC with my BF at the time - she did a great job, and i told her when i shook her hand when she attended the exit congrats (whatever that's called). Not a fangirl at all, but i enjoyed her acting. She seemed very real to me. Glad to see she's continued her career in the way she wanted to, with the singing as well. She's not really the one-note that others see her as if they have looked into her at all. Shocked that she was Dahmer Sr's next wife, and didn't put it together at all. I think she was excellent. To be fair, she was sounding off the amazing as always Richard Jenkins.

The last thing I (barely) remember her in is Betsy's Wedding. She seemingly dropped from the earth after that, like Irene Cara.

R29 John Cassavetes only appeared in Tempest. He didn't direct it. Paul Mazursky did.

r37 you may want to visit her IMDB. She's done much since then (not just mainstream movies, that's not the measure of success you dolt). Don't think you even read the posts above you. She's done more than you, I'm sure. At her own terms.

R37: Two things I remember after 1990 with Ringwald: She was Frannie in the first miniseries of The Stand, to Stephen King's expressed displeasure. Then she had a short-lived sitcom, Townies. Her co-stars were Lauren Graham and Jenna Elfman, both of whom would become much better known in later years. Those two were on the opposite trajectory from Ringwald. (However, Elfman's career has subsequently been eclipsed by her crazier-than-Kirstie cult lunacy.)

I was a preteen and teen in the '80s, and my friends and I used to speculate at the time about what the hell was going on between Molly and John Hughes. He was clearly obsessed with her.

But I wasn't prepared for the level of stalking from him that Molly described. Holy shit, he was a real nutjob.

Has no one mentioned her years of running off to live in Paris for decades and her eventual translation of French Gay literary novels to great acclaim?

Transcendentally beautiful??? She’s cute at BEST. Her entire career was built off being a plain Jane self insert, the homely teen girls of 80s America were her fanbase, and when they grew up, she was over as a leading lady. She also had flop after flop following her split with Hughes, who I think is to blame for giving her way too much confidence in her acting ability and stardom. Laura Dern was a similar type to Molly and around at the same time, but didn’t have her career blow up until later despite having both strong acting ability and Hollywood connections.

I think she’s fine in bit roles, I haven’t seen her on stage so I can’t speak to that, but she is one of the worst big stars of Hollywood. I never understand the fame of frau favorites like her (Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Reese Witherspoon, Cameron Diaz, Renee Zellwegger, etc are the grown-up versions. And do not start with me about Julia’s STAR POWER. Bleh).

Did no one inform the girl that in Fresh Horses she was not hired to PLAY one of the horses? She acted so coltish in that.

She was in the gay movie King Cobra as the pornographers sister.

Ringwald was a very decent teen actress 9and sometimes could be fantastic, like in "Sixteen Candles"), but when she got into her late teens and early twetnties, she fell into the problem most successful child actors do, which is she fell into bad habits of doing little acting tricks. When she went to France, I think she improved her game enormously since "Pretty Horses" and "Betsy's Wedding." She's now like Mare Winningham: a plain-faced but respected character actress, unlikely to play leads again, but constantly getting work.

I couldn’t stand her teeth, she needed whitening strips.

R33 yeah that drives me crazy. My feeling is either say specifically who you're talking about or hold your peace. Don't open up everyone and anyone you've worked with to slander

Limited actress, aged out of the kind of roles that she was suited for. She wasn’t the first, and won’t be the last.

She’s always given off a proto-Gwyneth vibe to me. She probably kicks herself for not thinking of “Goop” first.

Unknown Gay Trivia....Joanne Carson was a hero. She tried to get Hollywood to rally around the AIDS crisis in the early 80s...Only after Rock Hudson AIDS disclosure in 1985 did Hollywood come around. She really is an unsung hero to the Gay Community who never got her due........I only mention this because OP said Ringwald was going to play Joanne.

I've always liked her and I wish she had a bigger career when she got older but she is doing fine.

R25 = Felice Shachter

R29 I doubt it was Cassavetes, because by all accounts, he was really into his wife.

Also, the movie they did was released in August 1982, so it was likely filmed in 1981, when Ringwald was 13.

R50 Didn't Johnny Carson treat her badly?

I think she is cute as a teen, but her problem was aging out of them. Like Winona Ryder for a while, it was almost impossible to see her as an adult. They both kept their teenage acting tics well into adulthood. Winona is prettier though. Its an issue faced by many disney stars.

It IS hard to transition out of ingenue roles. It seems like both are having more success after having that transitional decade or two in between ingenue and mother (where they disappeared, basically), but seems unfair that it happens to women. Although I’m wondering if some men have the same problem once they age out of hunk/pretty boy roles….I guess Leo & Tom Cruise survived the transition in the spotlight with major movie roles, but people like Brendan Fraser didn’t.

You're telling me... R56

If Molly were any talented or compelling, she would have transitioned fine. Winona transitioned beyond teen movies very easily. Nobody went to see her popular movies because she was in them, they would have seen any random girl in the roles she played for John Hughes.

[quote] Winona transitioned beyond teen movies very easily

Not THAT easily.

[quote] She then explains how, at age 20 and after a series of hits, she was forced to wear a dog collar in an audition. Ringwald hardly remembers the moment: she assures that she experienced it as an out-of-body experience. Once the test was over, she sat in her car and started crying. She called her agent to tell him, and he laughed, telling her that she now had material for her memoir. “I fired him and moved to Paris soon after,” the actress wrote.

lol.

She’s another woke lunatic.

Was Joanne the one Johnny beat?

🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

I'm usually not one to engage in woke crap, but the John Hughes teen movies seemed terrible and genuinely misogynistic to me in a way other movies from the 80s that get the same kind of criticism do not. I think it's because they're presented so earnestly. You're not supposed to take something like Revenge of the Nerds seriously, but Hughes seriously believes the ideas he puts forth in his movies. You're supposed to take Jake Ryan as an ideal dreamboat at face value, not as a flawed person who has both good and questionable aspects to his character.