| Molly Ringwald  AKA Molly Kathleen Ringwald
Born: 18-Feb-1968
Birthplace: Roseville, CA
Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor Nationality: United States
Executive summary: The Breakfast Club Molly Ringwald was a huge movie star in her teens, the redheaded epitome of white suburban teen angst in Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. In her best film, The Breakfast Club, she kissed Judd Nelson while Simple Minds sang "Don't You Forget About Me", but America seems to have forgotten Ringwald.
Her father is a blind jazz pianist of some renown, and little Molly began singing with the band when she was four. At six, she recorded an album with her father called Molly Sings, now long out of print. She played one of the orphans in a late-1970s touring production of Annie, and she was briefly a Mouseketeer on The New Mickey Mouse Club. She was a regular for the first 13 episodes of The Facts of Life, before the show was revamped and Ringwald was replaced with Nancy McKeon.
In her first film, at 14, Ringwald played the daughter of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands in a complete rewrite of Shakespeare's The Tempest, wherein she was lusted after by goat-herder Raul Julia. She came to stardom with John Hughes's Sixteen Candles opposite Anthony Michael Hall, and worked for Hughes again in The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. At her mid-1980s peak, Ringwald was all over pop culture, setting fashion trends for teenaged girls and appearing on the cover of Time Magazine.
But Pretty in Pink was the beginning of the end for Ringwald. She had insisted on having the film's ending rewritten, so her character ended up gazing into the eyes of rich and popular Andrew McCarthy instead of her goofy pal Jon Cryer. The film was a huge hit, but Hughes remained frustrated by the ending, so he rewrote the script, switching the genders, and essentially remade Pretty in Pink as Some Kind of Wonderful. Eric Stoltz played the misfit Ringwald character, Mary Stuart Masterson was the Cryeresque platonic chum, and Hughes asked Ringwald to play the rich and popular girl, but she declined, miffed that it was not the leading role. The part instead went to Lea Thompson, and Hughes and Ringwald never worked together again. He continued churning out hits, while her career slowly sank with flops like For Keeps? and Fresh Horses.
David Lynch sent Ringwald a script for Blue Velvet, but Ringwald's mother thought it looked like pornography and threw it away, so that role went to Laura Dern. Ringwald was Razzie-nominated as Worst Actress for Betsy's Wedding in 1990, and later turned down roles that went to Julia Roberts and Demi Moore in, respectively, Pretty Woman and Ghost. She starred with an unknown Billy Bob Thornton in the short Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, but when funding came through to remake it as the feature film Sling Blade Ringwald was not invited to participate.
In 1996 she was in a short-lived sitcom, Townies, with then-unknowns Jenna Elfman and Lauren Graham. Her last widely-seen project was a TV-film for TNT in 2002, The Big Time, with Christopher Lloyd.
In 1999 she made her Broadway debut, assuming the lead role in a revival of Cabaret. It was not, however, a star-powered production. She replaced Milena Govich in the role, and Ringwald was herself replaced a few months later by Jane Leeves. More recently, she has worked as a book critic for the Hartford Courant, and she hopes to play the mom in an as-yet unfunded "next generation" sequel to Sixteen Candles.
Father: Robert Scott Ringwald (jazz pianist, b. 26-Nov-1940, m. 27-Nov-1960)
Mother: Adele Edith Frembd (pastry chef, b. 16-Mar-1941)
Sister: Beth Ringwald (physical therapist, b. 1965)
Brother: Kelly Ringwald (b. May-1966)
Boyfriend: Anthony Michael Hall (actor)
Boyfriend: King Ad-Rock
Husband: Valery Lameignère (writer, b. 1965, m. 28-Jul-1999, div. Nov-2002)
High School: Lycee Francaise School, Los Angeles, CA (1986)
Brat Pack
The Hartford Courant Book Critic
Risk Factors: Smoking
TELEVISION
The Secret Life of the American Teenager Anne Juergens (2008-)
Townies Carrie Donovan (1996)
The Facts of Life Molly Parker (1979-80)
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
The Wives He Forgot (10-Sep-2006)
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (24-May-2003)
Not Another Teen Movie (7-Dec-2001)
Cowboy Up (11-Jul-2001)
The Giving Tree (7-Mar-2000)
Cut (2-Mar-2000)
Kimberly (9-Sep-1999)
Teaching Mrs. Tingle (11-Aug-1999)
Requiem for Murder (1999)
Since You've Been Gone (18-Apr-1998)
Office Killer (12-Aug-1997)
Malicious (Apr-1996)
Baja (1995)
Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (24-Jan-1994)
The Stand (1994)
Face the Music (1993)
Betsy's Wedding (22-Jun-1990)
Fresh Horses (18-Nov-1988)
For Keeps (15-Jan-1988)
The Pick-up Artist (18-Sep-1987)
Pretty in Pink (28-Feb-1986)
The Breakfast Club (15-Feb-1985)
Surviving (10-Feb-1985)
Sixteen Candles (4-May-1984)
Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (20-May-1983)
Tempest (13-Aug-1982)
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