'I Was Taken Advantage Of': Molly Ringwald Recalls Being Preyed Upon As Young Star
Molly Ringwald still remembers getting “taken advantage of” as a rising Hollywood star.
The so-called “Brat Pack” alum of young 1980s actors is best known for her performance in John Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club,” and while she played a spoiled rich kid perfectly, Ringwald herself never felt like part of the club.
The actor, now 56, shared as much on the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast Monday.
“I never really felt like I was part of a community when I was in Hollywood, just because I was so young, really,” Ringwald told Maron. “I wasn’t into going out to clubs. I feel like I’m more social now than I was then. I was just too young and it was awkward.”
When Maron said she was “lucky” she didn’t “get taken advantage of,” Ringwald spoke up.
“Oh, I was taken advantage of,” she responded with a laugh. “You can’t be a young actress in Hollywood and not have predators around. I wasn’t raped by Harvey Weinstein so I’m grateful for that, but I also did write an essay for The New Yorker.”
The former studio head is currently in prison for rape and related charges.
Ringwald said her 2017 article, “All The Other Harvey Weinsteins,” was an attempt to remind people that “he’s not the only one.” She wrote in the essay that while she sued him over percentage rights to one of their early collaborations, Ringwald said she got “lucky” and that Weinstein never touched her.
“I was definitely in questionable situations,” however, she told Maron.
“But I do have an incredible survival instinct and a pretty big superego and managed to figure out a way to protect myself,” Ringwald continued. “But yeah, it can be harrowing, and I have a 20-year-old daughter now who is going into the same profession.”
The actor confessed while laughing that she tried “everything” to convince her daughter otherwise.
Ringwald herself started out with bit parts in shows like “The Facts of Life” before “Brat Pack” classics like “Sixteen Candles” made her a star. She partially decried those films in a 2018 New Yorker article for their “racist, misogynistic” and “homophobic” jokes.
The actor moved to France in the 1990s, but recently starred opposite Demi Moore and Naomi Watts in Hulu’s “Feud” series. Her daughter Mathilda Gianopoulos, meanwhile, just made her acting debut opposite Oscar winner Anne Hathaway in “The Idea of You.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
