Molly Ringwald rose to prominence seemingly overnight during the 1980s thanks to her appearances
in numerous now-iconic films, including The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink.
Following this immense success, the actress decided to take a step back from her acting
career during the 1990s for numerous reasons, though she cites one specific traumatic incident
with sending her over the edge.
Now, Molly has returned to acting on her own terms, and she looks much different than she
did during the 80s!
The actress also has a hard time dealing with how to show her old film roles to her three
kids due to some aspects of them that she has come to find problematic.
Join Facts Verse as we explore why Molly Ringwald’s transformation is turning heads.
Why Molly Ringwald Left Hollywood When you ask someone who the most iconic actress
of the 1980s is, chances are that they’ll say Molly Ringwald.
Despite the immense success that the actress found during the decade, she decided to turn
her back on Hollywood in the 1990s as a result of a traumatic experience that she had during
an audition.
According to Molly, she went to an audition with a male friend of hers where the director
that they were auditioning for asked her to let that friend put a dog collar on her for
the scene.
There had been no mention of a dog collar in the script that they had been given, so
Molly was understandably taken off guard.
The actress claims that she was so put off by the experience that she can’t remember
if she allowed the dog collar to be put on her or not, with her claiming that she had
a full-blown out-of-body experience as a result of the event.
She can, however, remember crying in the parking lot afterward, and she claims that this incident
is what inspired her to give up acting.
Molly Ringwald has never shared who exactly she was auditioning for or with during this
experience, but the actress has since slowly returned to the world of acting.
It seems that the incident that she directly attributes with causing her to retire for
a number of years isn’t the only problematic aspect of the actress’s Hollywood past that
she’s forced to reconcile with today, at the age of 54.
The actress is still stunning after all of these years, but may be hard to recognize
for fans that only know her from her appearances in the multiple 1980s classics that she appeared
in.
Molly seemed girlish during the 1980s but seems much more mature now.
This physical maturation has also come with a mental maturation, as Molly is far from
being the vulnerable girl that she once was.
Molly Ringwald Is Back in the Spotlight Since her return to acting in such nostalgia-skewing
works as the parody film Not Another Teen Movie and the CW program Riverdale, Molly
Ringwald has also garnered some attention for her outspoken beliefs about the problematic
aspects of certain films that she appeared in back in the day.
Of course, Molly rose to prominence during the 1980s thanks to her roles in numerous
teen classics of the era, including several that were written and directed by John Hughes.
It seems to be her John Hughes films that Molly has come to have the most problem with,
and it also seems as if she isn’t that entirely fond of the man himself.
However, Molly has never shared any directly damning accusations against John.
Rather, it simply seems that she is not all that fond of the man’s writing.
Molly certainly isn’t alone in her reevaluation of John Hughes works, as there are scenes
of his films that have been universally criticized for their problematic content.
Perhaps the most problematic film that the director has worked on is Sixteen Candles,
which was also the first of his films to star Molly Ringwald.
Sixteen Candles features a couple of different aspects that are commonly pointed to when
people want to criticize John Hughes’ films.
Of course, there’s the character of Long Duk Dong, who was portrayed by beloved Japanese-American
actor Gedde Watanabe.
Despite the fact that Long Duk Dong is obviously a negative racial stereotype, his comic relief
was one of the things that made the film so popular back when it was first released to
theaters.
Another problematic aspect of the 1980s classic Sixteen Candles involves a scene that many
believe to insinuate rape.
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Sixteen Candles Is John Hughes’ Most Problematic Film
If the existence of the character of Long Duk Dong in the film Sixteen Candles wasn’t
bad enough, there’s also the fact that the film features a scene that many today believe
to insinuate rape.
Of course, that would be the scene where the jock character passes off his drunken girlfriend
to Anthony Michael Hall’s nerd character so that said jock can go and be with Molly
Ringwald to blow out her titular birthday candles.
It’s strongly implied in the film that Anthony Michael Hall’s nerd character has sex with
the passed-out girl, though the drunken girl doesn’t seem to have much of an issue with
this later.
This is another aspect of Sixteen Candles that the public often points to when criticizing
John Hughes and his creative output.
Molly Ringwald, in particular, says that this is one of the biggest reasons that she’s
afraid to show her film roles to her three children.
However, Molly Ringwald has just as much of a problem with the way that her own character
is treated in the subsequent film The Breakfast Club.
The Breakfast Club Is Also Problematic The Breakfast Club saw Molly Ringwald portray
the character of Claire, who is being romantically pursued by Judd Nelson’s character of Bender
during school detention.
While it may have been a romantic pursuit to the audience at the time, Molly Ringwald
has since come to believe that the way that her character of Claire is being treated by
the character of Bender in the film is closer to sexual harassment than to any kind of romantic
pursuit.
Molly claims that Bender’s actions would be considered harassment in reality, but was
written by John Hughes to be rewarded in the film.
The Breakfast Club became a huge hit, and there’s no question that audiences were
pleased when the characters of Claire and Bender ended up together.
There’s one memorable scene in The Breakfast Club where the character of Bender peaks under
the table to get a look at Claire’s panties, and Molly claims that a body double was used
for these scenes because it made her uncomfortable.
She still claims that she felt a great deal of shame during the filming of those scenes
knowing that it was her body that was supposedly being represented on the camera.
Molly certainly had experiences such as this in mind when she decided to call it quits
on acting the following decade, though she directly attributes her semi-retirement to
the aforementioned incident at that traumatic audition.
Haviland Morris Defended John Hughes’ Writing The aforementioned drunk girl who is supposedly
raped in Sixteen Candles was named Caroline, and an actress by the name of Haviland Morris
played her.
It’s notable that Haviland has come out of the woodwork to defend John Hughes in the
wake of the general cultural reevaluation of his films.
According to Haviland, what happens to her character in Sixteen Candles is just as much
her character’s fault as is it the fault of Anthony Michael Hall’s character.
Molly Ringwald Thinks That John Hughes Is a Freak
Beyond John Hughes’ films, Molly Ringwald has also pointed to the writer and director’s
early work in the publication National Lampoon to criticize the auteur’s deranged mind.
It seems that John made several pieces for the publication that would be considered incredibly
problematic nowadays, including pieces regarding rape, transsexuality, and general sexual harassment,
all with a frat-boy slant.
However, Molly has also shared that she understands why so many people came to identify with John
Hughes’ films during the 1980s, and she doesn’t think that it’s because of the
bad stuff.
According to Molly Ringwald, she feels that John Hughes’ works during the 1980s spoke
to outcast teens that didn’t feel that they were being represented in the cinemas.
Because of this, Molly isn’t entirely negative when she’s approached in the street by fans
that remember her first and foremost from her work in the aforementioned films.
Still, though, Molly isn’t entirely sure about letting her own kids watch the films
she starred in.
According to Molly, she showed her eldest daughter The Breakfast Club and felt very
uncomfortable.
This experience is what caused her to publicly come out and criticize all of the aforementioned
aspects of the films she starred in during the 1980s.
What’s Molly Up to Now?
Following the traumatic audition that caused Molly Ringwald to leave Hollywood behind,
she moved to Paris and tried living for a while outside of the spotlight.
Nowadays, Molly is back in the spotlight and isn’t afraid to discuss issues about her
past that she feels are problematic.
Molly claims that her kids are some of the most woke kids on the planet, and that she
is afraid of what her two youngest children are going to think when they see how their
mother allowed herself to be portrayed in films such as Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast
Club.
However, Molly is slowly realizing that her kids are eventually going to find out one
way or the other.
Although Molly initially vowed never to show her two youngest kids her past film work after
the experience that she had watching The Breakfast Club with her eldest, it seems that she’s
slightly lightened up on the prospect since.
She has recently shared an image via social media of herself watching Pretty in Pink with
her youngest daughter.
There was arguably a lot that went into Molly Ringwald’s decision to leave Hollywood behind
during the 1990s, though she attributes most of it to one specific traumatic audition.
Now it’s time to hear from you: did you know that Molly Ringwald thinks that most
of the films that she starred in during the 1980s are too problematic to show her kids
and that she credits one traumatic audition with causing her to turn her back on the entertainment
industry for years?
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