Don't worry, we didn't forget about any of them.
It's been almost 40 years since a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal reported for detention at Shermer High in the Chicago suburbs, sacrificing a whole Saturday of their young lives and forming, in the process, The Breakfast Club.
The five principal stars—Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson—of the classic dramedy, written and directed by John Hughes, all ended up as part of "the Brat Pack," a term first prominently used in a 1985 cover story in New York magazine to describe some hot young (male) things who both worked and partied together.
The story referenced more than a few actors breaking out at the time and considered the first "Brat Pack" films to be 1981's Taps (featuring newcomers Sean Penn and Tom Cruise) and 1983's The Outsiders, and to this day there remain a slew of honorary members of the club, including Robert Downey Jr. But the moniker really stuck to the core five in The Breakfast Club and several other familiar faces from Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire, which also came out in 1985.
Like it or not.
"The media made up this sort of tribe," Andrew McCarthy, star of St. Elmo's Fire and 1986's Pretty in Pink, protested to People in 1999. "I don't think I've seen any of these people since we finished St. Elmo's Fire. I've never met Anthony Michael Hall."
In February 2020, Hall told Page Six that the Brat Pack designation that started with the New York article "never really offended me or anything. It doesn't bother me, but that's where it came from. The joke was, I wasn't even at the interview!"
But no one claimed that they all ran in a pack (McCarthy was notably on the outside of the Elmo's inner circle even then). They were, however, a tribe of actors that (almost all) showed up more than once in these seminal coming-of-age films.
"Brat Pack," itself a play on the 1960s-era Rat Pack, was mainly just a catchy name that stuck. So much so that Vogue came up with a "New Brat Pack" in 2015 consisting of the likes of Justin Bieber, Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, real-life friends who didn't act together but were growing up in public all the same, aided and abetted by reality TV and/or social media.
We know all about what the class of 2015 is up to, though. In honor of Ringwald's birthday Feb. 18, let's check in on the class of 1985...
Molly Ringwald
The star of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink was the queen bee of the Brat Pack. And, Ringwald told Entertainment Weekly in 1996, she remembered those days "very fondly."
However, in a 2018 New Yorker essay, she noted that certain scenes in The Breakfast Club wouldn't fly in the post-#MeToo era. "I worried that [my daughter] would find aspects of it troubling," she wrote, "but I hadn't anticipated that it would ultimately be most troubling to me."
Her star-making decade also included roles in The Pickup Artist with Robert Downey Jr. and the teen pregnancy drama For Keeps?, while her 1990s highlights included Betsy's Wedding, the 1994 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand and Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
In 2008, Ringwald switched into parental mode on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, playing the mother of Shailene Woodley's pregnant teen Amy. She then moved to a recurring role on Riverdale as Archie Andrews' mom, and played Noah and Lee's mom in the hit teen rom-com franchise The Kissing Booth.
In real life she's mom to a daughter and fraternal-twin boys with her second husband, Panio Gianopoulos.
Emilio Estevez
Estevez had already made a name for himself as one of the hot up-and-comers in The Outsiders and followed that up with the cult classic Repo Man before he taped anyone's buns together and ended up in detention in The Breakfast Club. He then starred in St. Elmo's Fire as Kirby, who pines away for a med student played by Andie MacDowell.
New York magazine deemed him the unofficial president (and treasurer, because he was the one most likely to pick up the tab) of the Brat Pack in the June 10, 1985, cover story that followed Estevez, Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe during a night on the town.
"I'll bet if you asked everyone in the cast who their best friend is, they'd all say Emilio," St. Elmo's Fire director Joel Schumacher said. "He's that kind of guy." (Estevez was Tom Cruise's best man when his Outsiders costar married Mimi Rogers in 1987.)
In 1985, Estevez had written the script for the movie that would become the 1990 comedy thriller Men at Work, which he also directed and starred in with brother Charlie Sheen.
He also notably starred in Young Guns and its sequel plus the three-film The Mighty Ducks franchise—and reprised the role of Gordon Bombay in Disney+'s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. Behind the camera he directed father Martin Sheen in The War at Home and wrote and directed Bobby, The Way and 2018's The Public.
Estevez has a son and daughter with ex-girlfriend Carey Salley, and he was married to Paula Abdul from 1992 until 1994.
Demi Moore
Georgetown grad Jules in St. Elmo's Fire is having an affair with her married boss, never a good idea. But at least she has the love of her friends to get her through. This is the only Brat Pack film that Moore was in, but the affiliation stuck—not least because she dated costar Estevez for awhile.
The author of the juicy memoir Inside Out became a major movie star, starring in Ghost, G.I. Jane, Now & Then, Indecent Proposal, Disclosure and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttl. She earned what at the time was the highest-ever paycheck for a female actor when she was paid $12.5 million for 1996's Striptease.
More recently Moore was in the Peacock drama Brave New World, the Amazon miniseries Dirty Diana, and FX's Feud: Capote vs. the Swans (with Ringwald). And, NBD, she's Oscar-nominated for the 2024 body horror film The Substance.
Moore share three daughters—Rumer, Scout and Tallulah—with ex-husband Bruce Willis. She married Ashton Kutcher in 2005 but they separated in 2011 and finalized their divorce two years later.
Rob Lowe
After playing the adrift Billy in St. Elmo's Fire, the Outsiders alum and Moore reunited immediately in the Edward Zwick-directed About Last Night.
Lowe's flourishing career and brooding-leading-man potential on display in the 1990 thriller Bad Influence took a hit after a sex tape scandal. But he rebounded with the help of a self-mocking appeareance on Saturday Night Live and stand-out comedic villain turns in 1992's Wayne's World and 1995's Tommy Boy (both produced by his pal Lorne Michaels).
He also was in The Stand with Ringwald, but since playing Sam Seaborn on The West Wing starting in 1999, Lowe's never been off TV. Brothers and Sisters, Californication and Parks and Recreation (inspiring his podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe) are among his 21st century highlights. He also had a critically acclaimed, unrecognizable turn playing Liberace's plastic surgeon in the 2013 HBO movie Behind the Candelabra.
In 2020, Lowe joined the sprawling Ryan Murphy empire as the commander of an Austin firehouse in 911: Lone Star. When not saving the day, he cocreated and stars in the Netflix comedy Unstable with son John Owen Lowe and hosts the game show The Floor.
The actor also shares son Matthew Lowe with his wife since 1991, Sheryl Berkoff.
Judd Nelson
He may have pivoted the most, playing wounded bad boy John Bender in The Breakfast Club and then a burgeoning Republican yuppie who's ready to settle down and marry girlfriend Leslie (Ally Sheedy) in St. Elmo's Fire.
In 1985, Nelson, Estevez and Lowe were all considered for the role of cocaine-addled life's-a-party pal Tad Allaghash in the big-screen adaptation of Jay McInerney's très '80s novel Bright Lights, Big City opposite Tom Cruise as Jamie, a magazine fact-checker on a bender who's questioning his choices, but the role ended up going to Kiefer Sutherland. (And Michael J. Fox took over when Cruise exited the project.)
Post-Pack highlights include a Golden Globe nomination for the 1988 miniseries Billionaire Boys Club and playing the slick record executive in Airheads, Brooke Shields' boss on Suddenly Susan and a shady label executive who's a rival to Terrence Howard's Lucious Lyon on Empire.
Nelson played the father of his Billionaire Boys Club character Joe Hunt in the 2018 feature-film adaptation of the same name, and more recent film credits include Save Christmas, Dante's Hotel and South of Hope Street.
Andrew McCarthy
McCarthy played adrift Georgetown University grad Kevin in St. Elmo's Fire—and then, in Pretty in Pink, rich high school senior Blane, who falls for Ringwald's outcast-because-she's-not-rich-and-makes-her-own-clothes (i.e. way too cool for this school) Andie.
Then it was onto playing a window dresser whose muse comes to life in Mannequin and a disaffected college student in Less Than Zero (with RDJ and Pretty in Pink costar James Spader, both considered Brat Pack-adjacent), while Weekend at Bernie's remains a no-explanation-necessary reference.
McCarthy's film highlights after the 1980s included The Joy Luck Club and Mulholland Falls, but he also leaned into theater (he was in Long Day's Journey Into Night when he told People in 1999 that the Brat Pack wasn't a real thing) and became a busy director, working on Gossip Girl, Orange Is the New Black, The Blacklist, The Sinner and Good Girls.
In 2022, he joined The Resident for a season and was in the 2023 indie film Grace Point with John Owen Lowe.
McCarthy is also an award-winning travel writer and authored the YA novel Just Fly Away before delving into the Brat Pack tag's effect on his life in his 2021 memoir Brat: An '80s Story.
The New Jersey native further explored the cultural impact of the moniker in the 2024 documentary Brats.
McCarthy has a son from his first marriage to college sweetheart Carol Schneider, and a daughter with Dolores Rice, his wife since 2011.
Anthony Michael Hall
From dweeb in Sixteen Candles to more estimable nerds in The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, Hall had his niche in the John Hughes world (including as Ringwald's real-life boyfriend for a short while)—so it was weird to see him as the ill-fated bully in Edward Scissorhands.
First, however, in 1985 Hall became the youngest-ever ensemble member of Saturday Night Live when he joined the cast at 17—the same season RDJ was on, and Hall is godfather to the Oscar winner's son Indio.
Like RDJ, Hall only stayed on SNL for one season, but acted steadily in small roles in the 1990s before playing Microsoft founder Bill Gates in the much-talked-about 1999 TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley.
Hall is the only member of the Brat Pack who ended up unrecognizable in an all-grown-up way when he resurfaced as Gates, and then starred in the USA supernatural drama The Dead Zone, based on the Stephen King novel, from 2002 until 2007. His film highlights include The Dark Knight, Foxcatcher, Live by Night and War Machine, and he popped up as Principal Featherhead on Riverdale and in recurring roles on The Goldbergs and Bosch: Legacy.
Next up is the June 2024 Netflix movie Trigger Warning with Jessica Alba.
As for onetime girlfriend Ringwald, Hall told Page Six in February 2020, "She's wonderful, a great lady. We've been friends since and I've seen her over the years."
Hall married longtime girlfriend Lucia Oskerova in 2020 and they welcomed a son together in June 2023.
Ally Sheedy
The WarGames alum played basket case Allison in The Breakfast Club, followed by college grad Leslie in St. Elmo's Fire—and she was a bridesmaid when Moore married Willis in 1987.
"I'm finally popular with these guys," she recalled thinking in a 2010 interview with NPR's Weekend Edition. "I was not popular in high school. I have some real friends. And we get to work. I was just blissfully happy. And I really do love those people."
Sheedy starred in the 1986 comedy Short Circuit (her acting was singled out by the New York Times), played John Candy's love interest in the 1992 comedy Only the Lonely and mined her own admitted experience with a sleeping pill addiction for the acclaimed 1998 indie High Art.
Her TV appearances have included Oz, The Dead Zone (with Hall), CSI, Kyle XY and Pysch, plus she appeared in Shutter Island, Welcome to the Rileys with Kristen Stewart and X-Men: Apocalypse.
Ringwald guest-starred on Sheedy's Freeform series Single Drunk Female in 2022, telling EW, "We have so much history we barely need to even speak. The challenge is trying not to cry! Getting to be on set with her again was one of the best parts of my year."
(Originally published Feb. 15, 2020, at 3 a.m. PT)