The Hollywood star Molly Ringwald is reflecting on the relationship that she had with the late filmmaker John Hughes. He directed her in the 1980s classic movies Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink when she was just a teenager.
While she enjoyed working with him at the time, Ringwald is now accusing Hughes of having a “peculiar” relationship with her.
Now It Seems ‘Strange’ To Ringwald
What was so peculiar? Apparently, Hughes told the teenager that she was his muse.
“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, 57, said while being interviewed on Monica Lewinsky’s “Reclaiming” podcast.
The 1984 film Sixteen Candles was actually Hughes’ directorial debut. Though she was still a child, Ringwald had already made multiple movies by then.
“But I was still only 15 years old so I didn’t have a lot of life experience,” she recalled. “It didn’t seem that strange to me [being Hughes’s muse]. Now, it does.”
“Like strange, still complimentary or strange weird, strange creepy?” asked Lewinsky, 51.
“Umm, yeah, it’s peculiar,” Ringwald admitted. “It’s complimentary. It’s always felt incredibly complimentary, but yeah, looking back on it, there was something peculiar.”
‘It’s Complex’
When Hughes was already in his 30s, he wrote Sixteen Candles for Ringwald after only seeing her headshot. Looking back on that now, it doesn’t seem to sit well with Ringwald.
“It’s complex,” Ringwald explained. “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.”
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Hughes Dies – Ringwald Reflects
Hughes died in 2009 after suffering a heart attack. After his death, Ringwald spoke out to say that she hadn’t talked to Hughes in the 20 years before his passing. In 2018, Ringwald penned an essay for The New Yorker about Hughes. In it, she reflected on the power imbalance between the two of them.
“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,” Ringwald wrote.
“He was also a phenomenal grudge-keeper, and he could respond to perceived rejection in much the same way the character of Bender did in The Breakfast Club,” she continued. “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.”
Related: Lucille Ball’s Protégé Carole Cook Of Sixteen Candles Fame Dies Three Days Before Her 99th Birthday
Ringwald Sounds Off
From there, Ringwald called out the sexism, racism, and homophobia that she feels was rampant in Hughes’ movies. She explained that she only realized this after rewatching The Breakfast Club with her young daughter.
“How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose?” Ringwald questioned. “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.”
The movies that Ringwald and Hughes made are some of the most beloved 1980s films to this day. It’s unfortunate that Ringwald can’t totally look back fondly on her time working with Hughes.
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