Molly Ringwald: ‘Elements of The Breakfast Club haven’t aged well’

The hardest thing about motherhood was realising that my time was not my own. As an actress I’ve travelled a lot and learnt to live with instability, but that’s not great for kids. That’s something I am always looking to improve on and luckily I have a husband who is a planner and is very stable. I provide other qualities, like spontaneity, humour and creativity.

We also have 14-year-old twins, Roman and Adele. All of our kids are good at communicating. They’re able to come to us when they need to, which I’m really grateful for. We at least did something right.

Mathilda moved out to Bushwick in Brooklyn about a year ago. She really needed to have her own space. As much as I loved my parents, I was definitely ready to move out as soon as I turned 18. Bushwick feels very far from where we are in upstate New York, but thankfully she still comes back home with her laundry.

She and I are both emotional and headstrong. When she was learning to walk, if we helped her for a couple of steps she would stop and say, “Do myself lone” and go back and do it again. That’s still her attitude today, including in her acting career. She took Gianopoulos, her father’s name, instead of Ringwald. I said, “Are you sure? Ringwald is so much easier to spell and it might open some doors.” But she was adamant.

The nepo baby thing is ridiculous. Of course if you have a parent in the industry, it’s something that you’ve heard about and might be genetically predisposed to. We wouldn’t let Mathilda pursue acting when she was a child, as we wanted her to concentrate on being a kid. She fought us on that — she’s still kind of mad about it, but it was the right decision. I don’t think that professional acting is a great way for kids to grow up. It’s way too stressful and it’s a crap shoot on whether or not the kids can make it through. I did my first professional job at ten years old and it was not easy.

I’ve talked to Mathilda about navigating the spotlight but everyone experiences it differently. Some people don’t mind living completely out loud. I’m not one of those people and I don’t think she is either. We’re basically a family of introverts who have had to learn to be more extrovert because of what we do.

I don’t enjoy watching myself on screen. I only rewatched The Breakfast Club, which came out in 1985, because Mathilda wanted to see it with me. There is a lot that I really love about the movie but there are elements that haven’t aged well — like Judd Nelson’s character, John Bender, who essentially sexually harasses my character. I’m glad we’re able to look at that and say things are truly different now.

They were all really fun movies to make. Sixteen Candles, the first movie I made with the director John Hughes, in 1984, was filmed during the summer. He would just let the camera roll and we would improvise. It was a very free, creative experience.

Right now I’m focusing on writing and acting. I enjoy the autonomy of writing and I love translating books from French, which uses a completely different part of my brain. My goal is a project where I get to incorporate everything — I can write it, act in it, direct it, maybe throw some French in there.

What I want more than anything is for Mathilda to be happy. She has an enormous brain and an interesting outlook on the world. Ultimately I want her to do what makes her feel fulfilled. I love her so much. I don’t think she’ll ever truly know how much she’s loved.

Mathilda

One of my earliest memories of my mum was when she was on stage in the musical Sweet Charity when I was about three. We toured all around and I would hang out with the dancers. Seeing her on stage was the coolest, weirdest thing ever, but it was also normal.

We lived in LA until I was almost 12. Lots of my friends’ parents were in the industry, so I didn’t realise how uncommon my mum’s job was until we moved to upstate New York. People there were fascinated by it.

My parents were pretty relaxed compared with the other parents. They probably tried to impose some rules — stuff like eating my vegetables and doing my homework — but I was very stubborn. Almost all of my friends’ parents are divorced, so it is unusual and pretty lovely that my parents have been together for so long.

A trip to Paris in 2007, when Mathilda was three

It weirds me out if I’m on Instagram and a film clip pops up of Mum when she was young. She’s like a whole different person but with all the same mannerisms. It’s really inspiring and so interesting to me that all of these people know her as this other version of herself. Watching her in those early films made me understand more about who she was outside of her being my mum.

I hated all of my mum’s clothes in both real life and the movies until two years ago. All of a sudden it switched and now I consider her closet my closet too. One of her big regrets is that she didn’t keep any of the clothes from those movies she made in the 1980s.

She doesn’t read her own reviews. She has told me since I was a kid that criticism is a huge part of any artistic job. You have to get used to it and know how to not let it affect you, but also not to seek it out.

When I’m going through something I’ll call my dad as he’s more of a problem-solver, but Mum is very good at helping figure out how I really feel and getting it all out. We’re both very passionate, so we may have butted heads when I was growing up but we also bonded over that. We’ve always felt more like sisters, and as I get older we get closer and closer.
Molly stars in Feud: Capote vs the Swans on FX/Disney+ from April 17 (watch the trailer below). Mathilda is in The Idea of You on Prime Video from May 2

Strange habits

Molly on Mathilda
She is absolutely incapable of closing a cupboard or a drawer. You always know when she has been in a room

Mathilda on Molly
She sends super-unfunny memes, even though she’s so funny in real life