Huge '80s Movie Star Molly Ringwald Opens Up About Nightmare of Finding Fame so Young — 'It Was Overwhelming and Scary!'
Molly Ringwald opened up about finding fame at a young age,
March 12 2025, Published 7:45 p.m. ET
Molly Ringwald has opened up about becoming famous at such a young age and how it was "scary."
RadarOnline.com can reveal the movie superstar appeared on the newest episode of Monica Lewinsky's Reclaiming podcast to chat about fame as a teenager and reflected on being cast in late director John Hughes' comedies.
Molly Ringwald has opened up about becoming famous at such a young age.
Back in the 1980s, Ringwald, now 57 years old, skyrocketed to fame as being cast in the films - Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink.
Fast forward a few decades, the 80s icon is now looking back on how she was considered Hughes' "muse" when he wrote the screenplay for Sixteen Candles and how she sees that term differently today.
She explained: "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."
While Ringwald already had a few roles on her acting resume, Sixteen Candles was Hughes' directorial debut.
She explained: "But I was still only 15 years old, so I didn’t have a lot of life experience. It didn’t seem that strange to me [being Hughes’s muse]. Now, it does."
Lewinsky asked: "Like strange, still complimentary, or strange weird, strange creepy?"
Ringwald replied: "Umm, yeah, it’s peculiar. It’s complimentary. It’s always felt incredibly complimentary, but yeah, looking back on it, there was something peculiar."
'Sixteen Candles' was Hughes’ directorial debut.
When Ringwald was just 15 years old, Hughes wrote the screenplay after seeing her headshot – when he was in his 30s – which is something she considers "complex" now looking at the situation from a different perspective.
She continued: "It's definitely complex, and it’s something that I turn over in my head a lot and try to figure out how that all affected me.
"I feel like I’m still processing all of that, and I probably will until the day I die."
Back in 2009, the filmaker died at just 59 years old from a heart attack.
At the time of his death, Ringwald revealed she had not spoken to him in more than 20 years.
Ringwald shot to fame with a handful of iconic roles.
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While watching The Breakfast Club back with her own daughter, Ringwald wrote an essay amid the #MeToo movement about Hughes' movies – calling out the sexism, racism, and homophobia.
She wrote: "If attitudes toward female subjugation are systemic, and I believe that they are, it stands to reason that the art we consume and sanction plays some part in reinforcing those same attitudes."
Ringwald continued: "How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? 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, in all of its transgression and barbarism, so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go."
