‘Pretty in Pink’ Is 40! Here’s What Molly Ringwald, 58, Is Doing Now—and Why She’s ‘Still Processing’ Teen Stardom

Molly Ringwald will forever be known for the trio of ’80s John Hughes teen movies she starred in, and the last of these movies, Pretty in Pink, recently celebrated its 40th anniversary. The 1986 teen classic, along with Ringwald’s two earlier Hughes movies, Sixteen Candles (1984) and The Breakfast Club (1985), endures in large part thanks to the actress’ charmingly relatable screen presence.

Ringwald, now 58 and a mom of three, got her big break when Hughes wrote the screenplay of Sixteen Candles specifically for her after seeing the then-unknown actress’ headshot, and the fact that the redheaded everygirl was actually a teenager when she was in these movies made them all the more authentic and heartfelt. Four decades later, Pretty in Pink and its predecessors retain a multigenerational appeal, and while Ringwald was a teen icon, she’s gone on to have a surprisingly diverse career since the ’80s. Read on to see what she’s been up to.

How ‘Pretty in Pink’ marked the end of an era

Molly Ringwald’s performance as Pretty in Pink’s protagonist, Andie Walsh, a smart and stylish high school girl navigating relationships and class dynamics, almost didn’t happen. The star, who turned 18 shortly before the film was released in February 1986, was ready to move on from teen movies at the time, and the studio wanted to give her part to Flashdance star Jennifer Beals. As the screenwriter, John Hughes knew Ringwald was perfect for the role and the director, Howard Deutch, agreed.

Hughes wanted Ringwald to star in his next teen movie, 1987’s Some Kind of Wonderful, but she declined, saying, “I was ready to graduate from high school,” and the role went to Mary Stuart Masterson. In 1988, Ringwald starred in her final teen movie, John G. Avildsen’s For Keeps. After that, she shifted to mature roles and could be seen in films like Fresh Horses (1988), Betsy’s Wedding (1990), Seven Sundays (1995), Malicious (1995) and Office Killer (1997).

An unexpected detour in France

Ringwald had an enduring passion for French culture and earned her high school diploma from the bilingual school Lycée Français de Los Angeles. She played Cordelia in the trailblazing French director Jean-Luc Godard’s 1987 adaptation of King Lear and in the mid-’90s, she moved to France, where she acted occasionally and married a Frenchman, writer Valéry Lameignère, in 1999. They divorced in 2002.

While Ringwald is no longer in France full-time, she’s continued her Francophile pursuits by translating the books Lie With Me (published by Philippe Besson in 2017) and My Cousin Maria Schneider: A Memoir (published by Vanessa Schneider in 2023) from French to English—an unexpectedly academic and low-key gig for a movie star.

From being a teen star to playing the mom of teens

Many of Molly Ringwald’s roles as an adult have winked at her former teen star status—and she’s always been in on the joke. She played a high school teacher in Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) and had a cameo as a flight attendant who’s hilariously blasé about teen romance in the 2001 spoof Not Another Teen Movie, and later made ’80s kids contemplate the passing of time when she played the mom of a 15-year-old girl who becomes pregnant (played by Shailene Woodley) in the series The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008 to 2013). She then played the mom of five teens (with Beverly Hills, 90210 teen star Jason Priestley as her husband) in the sitcom Raising Expectations (2016 to 2018).

More recently, Ringwald played a mom of teens in the Netflix teen movie The Kissing Booth (2018) and its sequels (released in 2020 and 2021). From 2017 to 2023, she could be seen as the mother of Archie Andrews (KJ Apa) in Riverdale, the dark TV adaptation of the all-American Archie Comics series. Her husband was played by the late Beverly Hills, 90210 teen idol Luke Perry.

The actress is also a mother of teens off-screen. Since 2007, she’s been married to writer and editor Panio Gianopoulos, and the couple has twins Roman and Adele, now 16, and a daughter, Mathilda, now 22. In an appearance on the NPR show This American Life, the actress discussed the surreal experience of showing Mathilda The Breakfast Club, and mused, “And now, I see the movie, and I just—I think, ‘Oh, their poor parents.’ And I think that when it was pointed out to me that the movie just talks about how all parents suck, you know, then I thought in my mind, ‘Well, actually, that might be kind of good, because then she can see that she doesn’t have parents like that.’ And then, she can appreciate us.”

Molly Ringwald’s next act

Molly Ringwald has kept busy in recent years. She’s starred in two of prolific TV producer Ryan Murphy’s anthology series, playing Shari Dahmer, the stepmother of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022) and Joanne Carson, the wife of Johnny Carson and a close friend of Truman Capote, in Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (2024). She also had a small role in a 2022 episode of the acclaimed series The Bear, and appeared in the films Bad Things (2023), Pursued (2025) and Montauk (2025).

Outside of her film and TV work, Ringwald has acted in a variety of Broadway plays and released a 2013 jazz album, Except Sometimes (which featured her cover of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” from The Breakfast Club‘s soundtrack). She’s also written a memoir, Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family, and Finding the Perfect Lipstick (2010) and a novel, When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories (2012).

Currently, Ringwald has two films in the pipeline: Run Amok, a drama about a teen trying to process a school shooting by putting on a musical, and One Night Only, a rom-com set in a society where premarital sex is illegal. She’ll also be joining the cast of the fourth and final season of the survivalist thriller Yellowjackets this year, and given that the series features former teen stars Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis and Melanie Lynskey, she’s an ideal addition to the cast.

40 years after her reign as Hollywood’s teen queen, Ringwald has taken on a delightfully eclectic array of projects while looking back on the ’80s with a critical eye. In a viral 2018 essay for The New Yorker, Ringwald acknowledged the problematic elements of her teen films, and when asked about being John Hughes’ muse last year, she said, “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.”

Molly Ringwald may still be processing her teen years, but in her late 50s, she’s carved out her own path, saying, “It’s kind of strange, but I’m really happy with where I’m at right now. I’m a working actress… but I can’t say that the opportunities have just been coming my way. So I’ve also been creating my own opportunities”—and she might just be even cooler now than she was in Pretty in Pink.