All Grown Up Honoree Molly Ringwald moved beyond early career highs
As the star of “Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink” and “The Breakfast Club,” Molly Ringwald understands why she’s still considered “the patron saint of teenagers.” Commercially successful and critically acclaimed, those films — and her performances — depicted adolescents with an emotional sophistication like few films before them. But Ringwald was bringing that complexity to the screen from her first role in Paul Mazursky’s “Tempest,” and the fact that she’s continued to do so throughout her career is why she’s set to receive the Variety Creative Vanguard Award at the Miami Film Festival on April 6.
Ringwald tells Variety that after more than four decades as an actor, she hasn’t been waiting for this kind of honor, but she welcomes it, noting she hasn’t been deluged with trophies over the course of her career. “It’s really nice to be recognized in that way,” says the actor, who has most recently portrayed Joanne Carson in Ryan Murphy’s “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.”
Even before her back-to-back movie-star turns in John Hughes’ films, working opposite the likes of John Cassavetes and Susan Sarandon in Mazursky’s 1982 adaptation of the Shakespeare play cemented her passion for performing. Yet even with her early explosive success, Hollywood proved incapable of keeping up with her ambition.
“Not everyone was able to write for teenagers as successfully as [Hughes] did,” she observes. “And even though I wanted to take on adult material, I was limited because I was still a teenager.”
She consequently looked outside Hollywood for opportunities, and just a year after starring in “Pretty in Pink,” appeared in another unconventional Shakespeare adaptation, Jean-luc Godard’s “King Lear.”
“It was an extreme to go to making something that was an art film that most people don’t completely understand — I mean, I made the movie, and I can’t really say that I totally understand it,” she says with a laugh. “But I’m really glad that I made it because it was exciting to do something that was just so different and so unexpected.”
Transitioning into adult roles proved difficult, not the least of which because of the “Brat Pack” label the media gave Ringwald and her young collaborators. “I feel like that was kind of a way to dismiss us,” she remembers. “But I got really close on a couple movies. I met with Mike Nichols for ‘Working Girl’ and Jonathan Demme for ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ but ultimately I was too young.”
While working to shed the reputation of early commercial highs, smaller roles in projects like Billy Bob Thornton’s 1994 short film, “Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade,” and more recently, Christopher Storer’s acclaimed FX series “The Bear,” have reminded Ringwald why she started performing in the first place.
“There were a lot of people that didn’t even recognize me, which to me is the biggest compliment,” she says of her turn in “The Bear” as an Al-anon moderator.
As she has returned to the spotlight with that buzzy show and Ryan Murphy’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” in addition to “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” Ringwald is more inspired than ever in her career. “Working with really strong actors completely raises your game,” she says.
In fact, she believes her best work is in front of her: “I am still waiting for a role that uses me to the best of my abilities.”
Exactly what that is has yet to be determined. “But I’ve definitely had enough of anything having to do with teenagers,” Ringwald says.
“There were a lot of people that didn’t even recognize me, which to me is the biggest compliment.” Molly Ringwald