Molly Ringwald on being John Hughes muse as a…
Molly Ringwald has a new perspective about her relationship with late director John Hughes.
The 57-year-old actress appeared on Monica Lewinsky’s podcast Tuesday and mirrored on being solid in Hughes’ 1980 comedies “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink” as a teenager.
“In terms of, did I know that I was a ‘muse,’ he told me that but when you’re that age, I had nothing really to compare it to,” Ringwald stated.
Molly Ringwald on Monica Lewinsky’s podcast. ReclaimingwithMonicaLewinsky/YouTube
John Hughes on the set of “Curly Sue” in 1990. Getty Images
Ringwald defined whereas “Sixteen Candles” was Hughes’ directorial debut, she already had expertise doing films.
“But I was still only 15 years old so I didn’t have a lot of life experience,” she famous. “It didn’t seem that strange to me [being Hughes’s muse]. Now, it does.”
“Like strange, still complimentary or strange weird, strange creepy?” Lewinsky, 51, requested.
“Umm, yeah, it’s peculiar,” Ringwald stated. “It’s complimentary. It’s always felt incredibly complimentary, but yeah, looking back on it, there was something peculiar.”
Ringwald additionally addressed how Hughes — who was in his 30s when he labored with the actress — wrote “Sixteen Candles” solely after seeing Ringwald’s headshot when she was 15.
Molly Ringwald, John Hughes, Mark Schoeffling on the set of “Sixteen Candles” in 1984. ©MCA/Courtesy Everett Collection
Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald in “The Breakfast Club” in 1985. ©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection
“It’s complex,” the “Riverdale” alum stated. “It’s definitely complex and it’s something that I turn over in my head a a lot and try to figure out how that all affected me.”
Ringwald added, “I feel like I’m still processing all of that and I probably will until the day I die.”
Hughes famously directed some of the most important comedy movies within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties, most of which featured the Brat Pack members.
Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer in “Pretty in Pink.” ©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection / Everett Collection
The filmmaker died in 2009 at age 59.
At the time, Ringwald stated in a New York Times op-ed that she hadn’t spoken to Hughes for more than 20 years earlier than his death.
John Hughes filming “Curly Sue” in 1990. Getty Images
Ringwald later wrote a 2018 essay for The New Yorker the place she appeared back on the facility imbalance in her relationship with Hughes.
“John believed in me, and in my gifts as an actress, more than anyone else I’ve known, and he was the first person to tell me that I had to write and direct one day,” she wrote.
Molly Ringwald speaks at MegaCon Orlando 2025. Getty Images
“He was also a phenomenal grudge-keeper,” Ringwald added, “and he could respond to perceived rejection in much the same way the character of Bender did in ‘The Breakfast Club.’ But I’m not thinking about the man right now but of the films that he left behind. Films that I am proud of in so many ways.”
Ringwald additionally referred to as out the sexism, racism, and homophobia current in Hughes’ films, which she realized after she rewatched “The Breakfast Club” together with her daughter.
“How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose?” Ringwald wrote. “What if we are in the unusual position of having helped create it? Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art — change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past.”
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