Molly Ringwald was once the face of an entire generation. Now the Sixteen Candles star says that generation’s parents are the reason nobody calls anymore.
In a recent interview, the 80s icon and proud liberal blamed Baby Boomers for the slow fade of her career. According to Ringwald, the people running Hollywood decided long ago that they had no use for her kind.
“They made up their minds to hate any Gen X-er who wouldn’t side with Rush Limbaugh,” she said.
“They hated Gen X,” she said again, just in case anyone missed it. It is a bold theory, and she did not stop there. “Nobody has looked at me for a serious part in two decades,” she added, describing years of auditions that went nowhere and roles that seemed to vanish the moment her name came up.
For fans who grew up with The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, there is something sad about hearing it. Those movies still play on cable every weekend, and they still hold up. Ringwald was everywhere in the 1980s. She was on magazine covers, in every teenager’s VCR, and on the bedroom walls of half the country. Many of those fans assumed she simply chose a quieter life.
Ringwald says that was never the plan. She believes she was quietly frozen out by a generation of executives who saw her politics and her age group as a problem.
The studios, however, tell a very different story.
Production managers at the three biggest studios in Hollywood were asked about her claims. All three gave essentially the same answer. Nobody blacklisted her for being Gen X in a Boomer world. She just can’t act.
“I’ve sat in on a lot of casting sessions,” said Alex Bruno, a production manager who has worked on dozens of films. “Her name came up more than you’d think. People wanted it to work because of the nostalgia. Then she’d read, and the room would get very quiet. It had nothing to do with Rush Limbaugh. Nobody in that room was thinking about Rush Limbaugh.”
Another studio source was even more direct. “We hire Gen X actors every single day,” the source said. “Half the leading men in this town were born in the 70s. If being Gen X was a problem, we wouldn’t have a movie industry.”
The comments have sparked a lively debate online. Some fans defended Ringwald, saying Hollywood has always been cruel to women over forty. Others pointed out that plenty of her former co-stars have kept working steadily, some of them with political views not far from her own.
Ringwald has not responded to the studios’ remarks. People close to her say she stands by what she said and believes the industry will never admit what it did.
In the meantime, the phone remains quiet. Somewhere a casting director is flipping through headshots, and somewhere a Boomer is being blamed for it. Representatives for Ringwald did not respond to requests for comment.