See the Brat Pack Then and Now, 39 Years After the Label Changed Their Lives Forever
Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez didn't consider being dubbed "Hollywood's Brat Pack" to be their finest moment.
And getting lumped into the club must have really shocked Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore and Ally Sheedy: None of them were even mentioned in the culture-jolting June 1985 New York magazine cover story that heralded those three actors as red-hot-yet-interchangeable rising stars who were, ahem, making the most of their fame.
They've all dealt with that formative, judgment-laced success in their own ways over the past 39 years. However, it's Andrew McCarthy—who was referred to once in the article but was branded a Brat all the same—who's been exploring the long-term effects of the designation on his life, first in his 2021 memoir Brat: An '80s Story, and again in the new documentary Brats.
In the film, he opens the floor to the casts of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire, the two 1985 films that ultimately qualified all of the above for membership, even though the New York story calls 1981's Taps—which starred none of these actors—the first Brat Pack movie.
"The Brat Pack is who people say it is, because the Brat Pack never 'existed' in any real way," McCarthy told The Guardian ahead of the doc's June 13 premiere on Hulu. "It's more an idea of young actors who'd taken over Hollywood—we were the ones that were doing that at that moment, so we're in the Brat Pack."
Referring to the reporter-along-for-a-night-of-partying article that started it all, the filmmaker cracked, "I don't think a journalist has been allowed to go out for drinks with a subject since."
But after spending decades pushing back against the nomenclature, McCarthy opted to lean in and get as much of the band back together as possible to discuss what it all meant to them, personally and culturally.
Lowe, Moore, Sheedy and Estevez sat down for Brats, as did Pack-adjacent actors Jon Cryer, Timothy Hutton (the lead in Taps) and Lea Thompson.
Ringwald is heard from in archival footage, but McCarthy admitted it "would've been great" to get her fresh perspective, telling Us Weekly, "She said she'd think about it and that was really the end of it."
Also skipping the trip down memory lane were Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall, who was only 16 when The Breakfast Club came out and therefore wasn't along for the New York-chronicled wild ride.
But he remains an O.G. Brat all the same because—to paraphrase brainy, flare-gun-packing Brian—the zeitgeist saw him as it wanted to see him.
Meanwhile, you don't have to give up your Saturday to see what all the members of the Brat Pack are doing now:
The star of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink was the queen bee of the Brat Pack. And, Ringwald told Entertainment Weekly in 1996, she remembered those days "very fondly."
However, in a 2018 New Yorker essay, she noted that certain scenes in The Breakfast Club wouldn't fly in the post-#MeToo era. "I worried that [my daughter] would find aspects of it troubling," she wrote, "but I hadn't anticipated that it would ultimately be most troubling to me."
Her star-making decade also included roles in The Pickup Artist with Robert Downey Jr. and the teen pregnancy drama For Keeps?, while her 1990s highlights included Betsy's Wedding, the 1994 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand and Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
In 2008, Ringwald switched into parental mode on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, playing the mother of Shailene Woodley's pregnant teen Amy. She then moved to a recurring role on Riverdale as Archie Andrews' mom, and played Noah and Lee's mom in the hit teen rom-com franchise The Kissing Booth.
In real life she's mom to a daughter and fraternal-twin boys with her second husband, Panio Gianopoulos.
Estevez had already made a name for himself as one of the hot up-and-comers in The Outsiders and followed that up with the cult classic Repo Man before he taped anyone's buns together and ended up in detention in The Breakfast Club. He then starred in St. Elmo's Fire as Kirby, who pines away for a med student played by Andie MacDowell.
New York magazine deemed him the unofficial president (and treasurer, because he was the one most likely to pick up the tab) of the Brat Pack in the June 10, 1985, cover story that followed Estevez, Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe during a night on the town.
"I'll bet if you asked everyone in the cast who their best friend is, they'd all say Emilio," St. Elmo's Fire director Joel Schumacher said. "He's that kind of guy." (Estevez was Tom Cruise's best man when his Outsiders costar married Mimi Rogers in 1987.)
In 1985, Estevez had written the script for the movie that would become the 1990 comedy thriller Men at Work, which he also directed and starred in with brother Charlie Sheen.
He also notably starred in Young Guns and its sequel plus the three-film The Mighty Ducks franchise—and reprised the role of Gordon Bombay in Disney+'s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. Behind the camera he directed father Martin Sheen in The War at Home and wrote and directed Bobby, The Way and 2018's The Public.
Estevez has a son and daughter with ex-girlfriend Carey Salley, and he was married to Paula Abdul from 1992 until 1994.
Georgetown grad Jules in St. Elmo's Fire is having an affair with her married boss, never a good idea. But at least she has the love of her friends to get her through. This is the only Brat Pack film that Moore was in, but the affiliation stuck—not least because she dated costar Estevez for awhile.
The author of the juicy memoir Inside Out became a major movie star, starring in Ghost, G.I. Jane, Now & Then, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttl. She earned what at the time was the highest-ever paycheck for a female actor when she was paid $12.5 million for 1996's Striptease.
More recently Moore was in the Peacock drama Brave New World, the Amazon miniseries Dirty Diana, and FX's Feud: Capote vs. the Swans (with Ringwald).
Moore has three daughters—Rumer, Scout and Tallulah—with ex-husband (but still dear family member) Bruce Willis. She married Ashton Kutcher in 2005 but they separated in 2011 and finalized their divorce two years later.
After playing the adrift Billy in St. Elmo's Fire, the Outsiders alum and Moore reunited immediately in the Edward Zwick-directed About Last Night.
Lowe's flourishing career and brooding-leading-man potential on display in the 1990 thriller Bad Influence took a hit after a sex tape scandal. But he rebounded with the help of a self-mocking appeareance on Saturday Night Live and stand-out comedic villain turns in 1992's Wayne's World and 1995's Tommy Boy (both produced by his pal Lorne Michaels).
He also was in The Stand with Ringwald, but since playing Sam Seaborn on The West Wing starting in 1999, Lowe's never been off TV. Brothers and Sisters, Californication and Parks and Recreation (inspiring his podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe) are among his 21st century highlights. He also had a critically acclaimed, unrecognizable turn playing Liberace's plastic surgeon in the 2013 HBO movie Behind the Candelabra.
In 2020, Lowe joined the sprawling Ryan Murphy empire as the commander of an Austin firehouse in 911: Lone Star. When not saving the day, he cocreated and stars in the Netflix comedy Unstable with son John Owen Lowe and hosts the game show The Floor.
The actor also shares son Matthew Lowe with his wife since 1991, Sheryl Berkoff.
He may have pivoted the most, playing wounded bad boy John Bender in The Breakfast Club and then a burgeoning Republican yuppie who's ready to settle down and marry girlfriend Leslie (Ally Sheedy) in St. Elmo's Fire.
In 1985, Nelson, Estevez and Lowe were all considered for the role of cocaine-addled life's-a-party pal Tad Allaghash in the big-screen adaptation of Jay McInerney's très '80s novel Bright Lights, Big City opposite Tom Cruise as Jamie, a magazine fact-checker on a bender who's questioning his choices, but the role ended up going to Kiefer Sutherland. (And Michael J. Fox took over when Cruise exited the project.)
Post-Pack highlights include a Golden Globe nomination for the 1988 miniseries Billionaire Boys Club and playing the slick record executive in Airheads, Brooke Shields' boss on Suddenly Susan and a shady label executive who's a rival to Terrence Howard's Lucious Lyon on Empire.
Nelson played the father of his Billionaire Boys Club character Joe Hunt in the 2018 feature-film adaptation of the same name, and more recent film credits include Save Christmas, Dante's Hotel and South of Hope Street.
McCarthy played adrift Georgetown University grad Kevin in St. Elmo's Fire—and then, in Pretty in Pink, rich high school senior Blane, who falls for Ringwald's outcast-because-she's-not-rich-and-makes-her-own-clothes (i.e. way too cool for this school) Andie.
Then it was onto playing a window dresser whose muse comes to life in Mannequin and a disaffected college student in Less Than Zero (with RDJ and Pretty in Pink costar James Spader, both considered Brat Pack-adjacent), while Weekend at Bernie's remains a no-explanation-necessary reference.
McCarthy's film highlights after the 1980s included The Joy Luck Club and Mulholland Falls, but he also leaned into theater (he was in Long Day's Journey Into Night when he told People in 1999 that the Brat Pack wasn't a real thing) and became a busy director, working on Gossip Girl, Orange Is the New Black, The Blacklist, The Sinner and Good Girls.
In 2022, he joined The Resident for a season and was in the 2023 indie film Grace Point with John Owen Lowe.
McCarthy is also an award-winning travel writer and authored the YA novel Just Fly Away before delving into the Brat Pack tag's effect on his life in his 2021 memoir Brat: An '80s Story.
The New Jersey native further explored the cultural impact of the moniker in the 2024 documentary Brats.
McCarthy has a son from his first marriage to college sweetheart Carol Schneider, and a daughter with Dolores Rice, his wife since 2011.
From dweeb in Sixteen Candles to more estimable nerds in The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, Hall had his niche in the John Hughes world (including as Ringwald's real-life boyfriend for a short while)—so it was weird to see him as the ill-fated bully in Edward Scissorhands.
First, however, in 1985 Hall became the youngest-ever ensemble member of Saturday Night Live when he joined the cast at 17—the same season RDJ was on, and Hall is godfather to the Oscar winner's son Indio.
Like RDJ, Hall only stayed on SNL for one season, but acted steadily in small roles in the 1990s before playing Microsoft founder Bill Gates in the much-talked-about 1999 TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley.
Hall is the only member of the Brat Pack who ended up unrecognizable in an all-grown-up way when he resurfaced as Gates, and then starred in the USA supernatural drama The Dead Zone, based on the Stephen King novel, from 2002 until 2007. His film highlights include The Dark Knight, Foxcatcher, Live by Night and War Machine, and he popped up as Principal Featherhead on Riverdale and in recurring roles on The Goldbergs and Bosch: Legacy.
Next up is the June 2024 Netflix movie Trigger Warning with Jessica Alba.
As for onetime girlfriend Ringwald, Hall told Page Six in February 2020, "She's wonderful, a great lady. We've been friends since and I've seen her over the years."
Hall married longtime girlfriend Lucia Oskerova in 2020 and they welcomed a son together in June 2023.
The WarGames alum played basket case Allison in The Breakfast Club, followed by college grad Leslie in St. Elmo's Fire—and she was a bridesmaid when Moore married Willis in 1987.
"I'm finally popular with these guys," she recalled thinking in a 2010 interview with NPR's Weekend Edition. "I was not popular in high school. I have some real friends. And we get to work. I was just blissfully happy. And I really do love those people."
Sheedy starred in the 1986 comedy Short Circuit (her acting was singled out by the New York Times), played John Candy's love interest in the 1992 comedy Only the Lonely and mined her own admitted experience with a sleeping pill addiction for the acclaimed 1998 indie High Art.
Her TV appearances have included Oz, The Dead Zone (with Hall), CSI, Kyle XY and Pysch, plus she appeared in Shutter Island, Welcome to the Rileys with Kristen Stewart and X-Men: Apocalypse.
Ringwald guest-starred on Sheedy's Freeform series Single Drunk Female in 2022, telling EW, "We have so much history we barely need to even speak. The challenge is trying not to cry! Getting to be on set with her again was one of the best parts of my year."
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