The fat faced and untalented Molly Ringwald

Because some gross pervo straight male director pushed her onto the public - the way they so often do - and everyone went along with it as usual.

She was before my time but I thought she was very pretty. She only really had two or three American hits anyway then went off to France. And now plays a mom on Riverdale.

CARBface. She ate only the rice in those sushi rolls on Breakfast Club.

I remember Rex Reed absolutely hating her, he used to mock her appearance.

FUCKY YOU MINDY

Yikes, R4. You are not kidding. This article is from 2014.

[quote] Molly Ringwald made her reputation 30 years ago, in all those forgettable, I.Q.-diminishing John Hughes teenage Brat Pack flicks—Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles. Gone are the freckles dotting her face like crushed Grape-Nuts and the red hair like a pepped-up Orphan Annie. Gone, too, is the movie career. What to do next? She made a brief detour in the theater, in Cabaret, How I Learned to Drive and Enchanted April. Now she’s blonde and svelte and making an appearance at the Café Carlyle as a jazz singer. Nearing 50, she’s all grown up, a wife of 14 years and the mother of three children. But she is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a jazz singer.

She was cute in a relatable girl next door way. Pauline Kael hated her too.

I worked with her a bit later in her career. She was perfectly nice and spoke good French.

Nice trolling start for a thread OP. Bravo.

She was not untalented, don't be petty. She could emote more than Ryan Gosling, who somehow managed two Oscar noms.

OP = Rex Reed

She once stood up the fabulous Bette Davis for a VF shoot. She thought , SHE was the better of the two.

She cute and talented. As for being a jazz singer, her father was jazz musician. It's not so strange for her to give it a go.

She was cute

"She's got her boobies!"

Forever sulking..

No, Kael loved her -- starting with the Sarandon film, then in "Sixteen Candles". She even liked her in "Pretty in Pink" if not the film itself. (I don't think Kael went near "Breakfast Club").

Plain girls liked seeing a girl like themselves be the focus of movies and get hot guys. Once they grew up, no one else cared to see Molly.

Ringwald was a ring-necked ringtail whose career ringtoss convinced a ringmaster to feature her in a bunch of ringtaw flicks.

She had red hair. So unique.

R16 the Sarandon movie was Tempest. I loved that movie as a 14 year old in the summer of 82.

Rex Reed has dementia, right?

"Gone are all those red freckles..." Molly never had freckles. He's confusing her with the Wendy's girl.

We all knew a girl in high school that was just cute at best ( rich or not) that was inexplicably popular , dated the hottest jocks and then became prom queen..she was perfectly cast.

Kael adored Molly Ringwald.

On Sixteen Candles: "Molly Ringwald has a lovely, offbeat candor."

On Pretty in Pink: "The only thing the movie has going for it is Molly Ringwald's charismatic normality."

[quote] But she is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a jazz singer.

And if there's one soul brother who knows about jazz, it's Rex Reed!

OP= Ally Sheedy

R22 Nailed it. That description fits her appeal perfectly.

Op, what, you want a world of Stepford wives and Playboy playmates? No one is perfect and they shouldn't be.

Molly Ringwald got a taste of Beastie Boy cock.

I thought she was pretty. I loved her full lips.

She was never a big deal. Her only claim to fame is being in a few John Hughes movies as a teenager. As an adult, she didn't have a single hit movie or TV series. Her career was basically over by 1987/1988 when she had a long string of flops as the lead (Pick-up Artist, P.K. and the Kid, For Keeps, Fresh Horses)

True. Her career didn't even last a decade. By 1990, she was reduced to playing the daughter in an Alan Alda flop movie, then did a bomb television series in which she was overshadowed by Jenna Elfman who wound up getting Dharma and Greg the year after.

Imagine, being upstaged and outshone by Jenna Fucking Elfman.

[quote] She was never a big deal.

???

She made the cover of TIME Magazine, which meant in the 1980s she was a huge deal.

Thanks, R20, blanked on it and too lazy to look it up. I do need to order it though. Now that Mazursky is dead, I am catching up on all his old films that I missed thru the years. Just did "Last Stop, Greenwich Village" and loved it.

Well, I have heard this rumor for years - Molly was offered the lead in "Pretty Woman". Now that would have been a hoot. The movie does nothing for me, but it was a massive hit and certainly the vehicle that launched Julia into the stratosphere. Perhaps her career would have taken a different turn entirely (or Pretty Woman could have been a been a flop).

Molly Ringwald DEMANDING to be in the middle between Jenna Elfman and Lauren Graham

She doesn’t even get the “And” credit as a guest star on Riverdale. Tragic.

She looks marvelous

Human canker sore

Straight men have a weird fascination with red head women. I guess it started with Charlie Brown...

R34 I doubt Disney was ever seriously considering her. Her movies up to that point were all bombing badly. She was coming off of Fresh Horses (which was a spectacular failure and didn't make back even half of its budget) while Julia was coming off of Steel Magnolias which was a big hit (and got her an Oscar nomination).

She had a sweet baby face. She's actually more attractive as a middle aged woman.

[quote] [R34] I doubt Disney was ever seriously considering her. Her movies up to that point were all bombing badly. She was coming off of Fresh Horses (which was a spectacular failure and didn't make back even half of its budget) while Julia was coming off of Steel Magnolias which was a big hit (and got her an Oscar nomination).

Molly was offered the film well in advance of what it wound up becoming, which was a toothless Garry Marshall rom-com. The script had been kicking around for a few years under its original name, 3000, and was a much grittier drama about a whore who was bought for a week by a high powered businessman who made a bunch of promises, then dumped her ass back on the street to find another customer. So back in 87/88, Molly's star was still quite bright and she would have been considered a get.

R4- Rex Reed once talked about Molly Ringwald and her Cheez Doodle hair.

Julia Phillips, running into Warren Beatty on a date in the '80s: "I peer around his chest and see Molly Ringwald's fat mouth. How does this guy avoid jail?"

I loved her and totally wanted to be her in the 80s. She wasn't a classic beauty but she was a doll.

R35 according to director Garry Marshall 's autobiography,,Madonna was offered the part in Pretty Woman, when the movie was called 3000, he talks about meeting her in a hotel and talking about the script

Madonna turned it down to do Dick Tracy

Rex Reed is a spiteful old queen.

Molly was the best! So glad a grew up when she was a HUGE star! Julia Roberts owes a huge part of her career to Molly for turning down Pretty Woman

I wonder if Molly still has any contact with..

It's weird to think of Molly's head being superimposed to that model's body for the post of Pretty Woman rather than Julia Roberts' head.

OP ?What on earth did MR ever do to you? Blow the homecoming king?

Unless she ALSO stood up Bette Davis, R11, I’d always heard it was Lillian Gish that Ringwald stood up for a photo shoot. It was quite the PR blunder at the time!

R39, YES.

It wasn't Bette Davis and Vanity Fair. It was Lillian Gish and People Magazine. And the writer described poor old Lillian (who was in her 90s even then) as looking wistful and saying something about how she guessed the old stars of yesterday didn't mean anything to today's generation...it made Molly look like a massive douche.

Molly had a crazed look in her eyes during the John Hughes tribute at the Oscars. She looked really nervous.

Jesus! She almost looks coked out, R55.

Remember, "Pretty Women" was a very different very dark and druggy project called "3000" before Disney got ahold of it. So maybe that is what Molly (and a million others according to legend) turned down.

I remember I had a huge crush on her during the early Facts of Life episodes.

R3, at least she wasn’t anorexic, botoxed to the gills, ducklipped and a fucking plastic surgery mess like many of the trolls thrust upon us now ... (albeit a ranga and a chub, she was a better role model, and a more realistic ‘girl next door’)

She had a distinctive look and she was mostly relatable. My BFF in high school looked like her.

Sidetrack question: why did people dress so oddly in John Hughes movies? Sometimes the guys would dress sort of normally, but the girls always wore really weird stuff that none of my friends would ever wear - and we were all from wealthy NYC suburbs, so it’s not a class/money thing. Like Molly Ringwald’s outfit in The Breakfast Club. That was a mom outfit. No high school girl I knew would have worn those clothes. The extras dressed normally. But not the principals.

For that matter, I have always been puzzled by the acclaim towards John Hughes. He directed bland, whiny Teen angst suburban tripe and people treated him as genius.

Oh yum! R49 ...

That old bag Gish never could accept the fact that nobody gave a shit about her babe in the woods routine...

R61 I think he may have been the originator of that genre. It seems dull now because so many films like it have been made.

Her mom turned down Laura Dern’s part in Blue Velvet for her. It would have set a new course for her career before typecasting set in peremanetly. The part was written for her by Lynch as he wanted a Molly Rigwald type to accompany the darkness of Isabella Rossallini’s character

Loved her because she projected intelligence and good taste. Also loved the John Hughes films and their soundtracks. So disappointed to learn when he died that he was republican, although I don't think he would've supported the Cheeto Hitler.

I was a teenager during her peak and I still sort of love her. Won’t listen to the critics. If you didn’t “get” her then you won’t now. She was gen x’s it girl and she just seemed/seems so down to earth and normal. No, she was never “hot” or a great beauty but that was the point. She was the nerd-girl next door.

Ha ha

Rex Reed is exactly how I imagine many Datalounge posters.

PRET - TY IN PIIIIIIIIIIIIIINK

PRET - TY IN PIIIIIIIIIIIIINK

warren acquired the book on Edie Sedgwick and wanted Molly to star.

She had a fresh-faced innocence about her. That's why she was popular in the 1980s but is hated now.

You've always had these types of girls in American films and TV - definitely when I was growing up. Slightly the outsider. Not the prettiest. But clever with a soulful sort of hidden sadness about them on and off screen. Good little actresses. I can't remember their names - the daughter of the Mamas and Papas guy, the girl in Family, the girl in Goodbye Girl. Dana Hill (I googled that one). Janeane Garrafalo was a sort of adult version. Americans seemed to like them. Understandably. I don't know if they're still popular as a type.

R73 Molly Ringwald was much prettier than any of those girls.

[quote]Molly Ringwald was much prettier than any of those girls.

Not MUCH, R74 - but enough to place her a bit above them and hence a bigger movie star than them. But she was the same genre.

I never understood why she was cast in films opposite male romantic leads she had little chemistry with, but alongside other actors & actresses she worked very well with like Anthony-Michael Hall.

The most egregious example was PRETTY IN PINK. There she had negative chemistry with her romantic interest Andrew McCarthy and seemed barely to notice her deuteragonist Jon Cryer playing in the same scenes with her, but lit up next to antagonist James Spader with whom she only shared a handful of short scenes. Even in retrospect it is easy to believe their characters despised one another and fixated on their class/status/physical differences via a strange disturbing attraction, and yet Hughes chose to ignore this...for PROM! Aside from the marvellous Annie Potts, PIP was really just 80 minutes of wasted opportunities.

The pink shit is what yanked her career

R76 There was no chemistry with Cryer because she hated him (she had wanted Robert Downey Jr cast as Duckie). When the movie tested poorly, she was one of main forces pushing for the ending to be reshot because she didn't think her character would fall in love with someone as ugly Cryer. Cryer said on the DVD audio commentary,"Molly dropped the bomb that she would’ve been fine with the original ending if Robert Downey Jr., had played Duckie. But since it was me, she just couldn’t see it. It was like, wow, so I’m that unattractive? Thanks, Mol!"

r69, Rex Reed was the Queen of Pointless Bitchery (with eldergay taste before he was an eldergay). And this was before there was a website that thrived on pointless bitches.

Show some pointless bitchy respect!

The best scene from the overrated, badly written Breakfast Club. Anthony Michael Hall out acts all of them, but Molly Ringwald is no slouch. Is she Meryl? No. Believable, yes.

Teen stars who date typically annoy me if they pique my interest at all, but I have to confess that back then I really thought Ringwald & Hall made a strong match. They only dated for a year or two and it was probably for press but looked very convincing and promising from the outside, perhaps as they were both offbeat types with deadpan senses of humor. Their on-screen work was never better than with each other.

Wonder if they'd have made it work as a longterm couple if it weren't for their career downturns?

Molly refused to return to Facts of Life when they had the big reunion speshal.

[quote] because she didn't think her character would fall in love with someone as ugly Cryer.

He wasn't so ugly but he did seem like the gay best friend.

I always liked her. Pretty. Easy to be on her side in the ever-present war of the geeks vs the popular crowd.

I don't understand the hatred.

[quote] "Would you do that to me?" "I don't have any friends."

OT from Molly and R80 is not wrong about BREAKFAST CLUB as "overrated and badly-written", but damn it if that little dialogue doesn't get to me every time. I was a weirdo nerd loner for all of HS so it hits where I live. Brian was the most interesting character in that film, particularly in conversation with Alison & Claire.

Ringwald red-faced screaming "I hate you" at Judd Nelson is so meta. She must have hated his acting too, he gives next to nothing compared to the rest of the Breakfast Club.

Looking at that Breakfast Club clip - reminds me of why I'd never watch a teen movie as an adult, even if it was made when I was a teen. It just doesn't interest me to remember all that bullshit.

I actually liked for keeps, and the supporting cast (Miriam flynn, conchata ferrell and Kenneth Mars were superb).

Wasn’t for keeps the movie she did instead of some kind of wonderful for John Hughes which ended their professional relationship.

I kinda miss the teenagers you saw in the 70's and 80's. They all looked like normal people you'd go to school with. The WB/CW came along and made everyone think that 16 year olds were supposed to look like supermodels and that fucked up everything.

I think Molly is a perfectly pleasant actress for the most part. I'd never want to see her in classical theatre or anything, but she's fine in those 80's movies. She CAN NOT sing, however. She's barely even mediocre. Hell, I thought she was too mediocre to even sing Sally Bowles when she was in Cabaret and Sally is SUPPOSED to be a mediocre singer. Her tour of Sweet Charity was embarrassingly bad. She wasn't funny or charming at all and was, at the time, a little too heavy for the role. There's a line in the script talking about how much the character weighs and it made the audience chuckle uncomfortably because it was obvious that Molly weighed much more than what her character had said.

John Hughes movies probably seem old hat today, but while he didn't invent the teen genre, he was one of the first (along with the horror genre) to legitimize it and bring teens into the theaters. That was huge thing back then. He was talking about real teen issues in a frank way.

I knew a girl who was in the Annie tour with Molly a few years before The Facts of Life. Neither were Annie, both were other orphans. They were a tight group of girls with the exception of Molly, according to my friend. She blamed it on Molly's mom - that she kept her separated. More recently I met someone who worked on 16 Candles who also credited the mother for causing Molly to be seen as unapproachable.

Who's to judge? She had a good run for a while and remains to be a recognizable name due to several films that are part of cinema history. None of the other orphans in that production went on to achieve anything close to what Molly did. So I guess it can be a trade off sometimes.

She played Annie on broadway. And you call yourselves gay.

Suburban Frau - check your facts. She played one of the orphans in the west coast tour of Annie.

R91 I was testing you. And you passed. DL never disappoints

Absolutely R85, I didn't mean to dismiss the whole thing. The scene before that is moving along with Ringwald / Clare taking abuse and doing a good job and then Ally Sheedy's character has to drop the line "When you grow up, your heart dies". BLEH.

But Anthony Michael Hall is so good in that scene he really nails the way a nerdy kid feels like he wants to die in high school. Not a false note in the whole performance. This after playing the overconfident douchebag in Sixteen Candles.

And that scene is painful for any kid who felt like he portrayed it in high school.

She supposedly had "quirky" good looks. She was a star of her time, the trivial and shallow 80s. She was a perfect fit for the roles she got in all those stupid teen movies. But eventually stopped being a teen and the movie roles dried up. She reminds me a little of Winona Ryder. Ryder's forte was neurotic teenagers and she seemed permanently stuck at that age. Her film career dried up too, so she has to get work on tv now. Being good at playing teenagers doesn't usually translate to adult roles. Ryder and Ringwald were very good at playing teenagers; that's what they were best at. Both failed to be taken seriously as actresses beyond their teenage personas.

Fuck you guys. At least I was famous once-upon-a-time, unlike you queens.

That’s a great description, r73. Makes me think of actresses like Lea Thompson or Jennifer Jason Leigh or Mary Stuart Masterson.

Relateable in a girl next door sort of way, but not enormous range. You couln't imagine her doing Strindberg. Andrew McCarthy had little chemistry with anyone.

I always liked her. But she had her time.

She was kinda OK in that teen drama a few years ago where she had the incredibly hot husband. But her teen ennui didn't land well as an adult.

[quote] I kinda miss the teenagers you saw in the 70's and 80's. They all looked like normal people you'd go to school with. The WB/CW came along and made everyone think that 16 year olds were supposed to look like supermodels and that fucked up everything.

Exactly. All the teens walk around, talk and act as if they were coached by Joan Collins and Donna Mills. The men all sound the same. Such a bland soup of people.

[quote] That’s a great description, [R73]. Makes me think of actresses like Lea Thompson or Jennifer Jason Leigh or Mary Stuart Masterson.

Not me. Again, those three actresses (along with Ringwald) are cute compared to the ugly duckings mentioned in R73

Face like a big Apple pie

THere's more to life than cute, R100 - get beyond it.

My favorite review of "Pretty in Pink" came from the guy I saw it with who told another friend: "It has Harry Dean Stanton wearing a ROBE!" That did sort of sum it up. He looked like he'd been pulled in from some other movie by mistake.

I love Pauline Kael pointing out that there is a huge bouquet in Andie's room "to brighten up the poverty (it looks to be in the hundred and fifty dollar range)." Parentheses hers. Perfect, the kind of thing she always seemed to catch.

She gives great face

"Molly refused to return to Facts of Life when they had the big reunion speshal."

Oh FUCKING dear, R82. It wasn't a big "speshal" it was just a regular episode. And if I were her, I wouldn't have done it either. They reduced her to an under-five during a few episodes of season 2 before writing her off completely. I love how the writers retorted and didn't even give an update on where Molly was at, just that she "was busy"

She was very cute, in a gawky way, which was relatable to teens.

Whatever happened to Michael Schoeffling, who played Jake, in Sixteen Candles? He was very cute. Was he in anything else after this movie?

I liked her in "Betsy's Wedding," the comedy where Molly, as Betsy, falls in love with and marries a mob boss nephew, despite the opposition of her family. She played the part just right, daffy and lovable and sweet. The whole movie was well cast, I thought. Her parents were played by Alan Alda and the hilarious Madeleine Kahn.

I loved Molly back in the day. Loved her. She was the everyday girl who grounded the mad characters around her in 16 CANDLES and PRETTY IN PINK. And she gave a very good performance in THE BREAKFAST CLUB. She's right on in that piece. Not too deep or interesting, but just deep and interesting enough. It totally worked.

And R30 she was a really big deal. Not only the TIME magazine cover. She was the first teen star to command $1 million dollar salary. Also she was on the cover of the edgy INTERVIEW magazine. In her moment she was as major as a teen star could be.

She became a movie star when movie stars looked more like real people. Not as much like models. And she had a quality which worked somehow. . She was oddly appealing without being terribly funny, beautiful, sympathetic, or weird. It's strange but it worked.

She's not bad on RIVERDALE. And she actually was quite good as Christian Slater's sister in KING COBRA. She was very moving.

However, did anyone see the stage adaptation of TERMS OF ENDEARMENT she starred in a few years back? Whoa. Aurora Greenway she is not. It was kind of shocking.

No. It was totally shocking. The entire production from start to finish was beyond shocking.

Hot Dad from American Teenager deserves a thread before this frau.

Though for obvious reasons I was never interested, I always thought she was a cute teen, and the type that would be popular in high school. Not fat-faced or untalented at all. What a trolly thread, OP; for your sake I hope you get it out of your system by the weekend

R107 He left the business and is now a carpenter somewhere in New England. Makes furniture pieces I believe. Married with several kids. He's also in LONGTIME COMPANION.

That 16 CANDLES last sequence with him at the church in front of his fancy red car waiting for Molly? Forget it. It works like a charm. He's sexy as hell. Her moment with the dad is so sweet. She's adorable. And then the kiss with the birthday cake is kind of a dream come true. I'd take it.

It’s possibly just a fever dream, but I recall her doing some of her best work on a telenovela story arc opposite Mr Erik Estrada in the late 90s

I love “When It Happens To You”. She’s really a gifted writer.

You'll never forgive me for getting Jake's dick. Not my character. Me. All of it any which way I wanted.

16 candles x 2.5= The number of years you realized you were never going to get Jakes' and no number of tricks was going to equal it.

Yeah, that's right, bitch. I'm the Queen of Dick. Not you.

She’s also in a Canadian tv show with Jason Priestley

SO fat-faced. Hated the bitch on sight.

I'd have killed to have seen her in Terms of Endearment. That sounds like a glorious train wreck. I'd imagine her Aurora to be super unlikable. MacLaine could play batty bitches, but there was still something likable about them. Molly can't really bring that much charm to it.

She makes me think of raisins. Did she do a raisins commercial as a child?

To the OP and R117

What a rebel!

Look! She did an up yours finger! Thank so much John Hughes!

R89 wasn’t Alyssa Milano also on that tour? I think I may have known someone on that one...

Danielle Brisebois must have been on that tour.

Post your picture for us, OP, and we can all tell you what an untalented freaky loser your are.

And while you're at it, give a complete list of your television and movie credits.

Tell your othodontist to loosen your braces r124.

Tony Randall Mary Tyler Moore Molly Ringwald Re-run shows

Maybe Op made a typo and meant to say rat faced.

R76, I always thought that Spader and Ringwald's characters had tons of chemistry-- a sort of 1980s [italic]Pride and Prejudice[/italic] thing going on. (Who could blame her? Spader was very hot back then.)

She was one of if not the first major actress to get the bee stung lips. And oddly enough she looked better with them.

When the Breakfast club came out I wanted her hair cut so bad but my mom absolutely refused to let me get it. But I was only 8 at the time.

Lol at "bee stung lips". I remember before it was possible to buy them whites called them ni$$er lips, but as soon as we could buy them, suddenly they were "bee stung lips." We really are shit people.

She kinda revolutionized the mini industry trend of the redhead ingenue. Since Molly, it seems every 10-15 years there comes a new redhead star forced in our faces that carry the same "appeal" as Molly did, with varying degrees of career trajectories. Molly, then Lohan, then Emma Stone, and now the scarlet harlot Bella Thorne.

She's OK I guess. But her face is sooo skinny.

Jake got old and fat.

It's never hit me until just now but; as a teen her features were quite boyish. Her face wasn't "fat" as OP blithely puts it, but not feminine or womanly either. Perhaps that worked out well for her given androgyny was de rigeur in the '80s. Even her signature pout and soft hair and old-lady attire couldn't totally detract from the blocky-yet-snubby composition of her face. Take away the makeup and lob, you could see a pretty but insolent preteen boy.

I wonder if that was a part of her popular appeal as with male contemporaries of hers back then, Bambi femme types like Ralph Macchio & Corey Haim.

R83 Yes Duckie did seem like the gay friend. Plus he was just too eager, not to mention his white wing-tips were dirty.

Thanks, R112. I love that movie! Jake (Michael Schoeffling) was so hot, yet so nice and down to earth.. which made him more attractive. The last part of the movie, where Molly is coming out the church, and there he is... by the red Porsche waiting for her, was a great scene. Then they have a private celebration of her birthday. Good for him. It sounds like he's found a good life.

I didn't know about movie, Longtime Companion... I'll have to check it out. Thanks.

She is still relevant unlike most of her set.