The Ladies Of The '80s Brat Pack Are All Grown Up & So Gorgeous

In the early 1980s, a recognizable group of young stars appeared in a series of coming-of-age movies, like "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," and "St. Elmo's Fire." David Blum, then a young writer at New York Magazine, dubbed them the "Brat Pack," in homage to the famous cohort of musicians from the 1960s. The group's official roster is somewhat amorphous, and there's some disagreement about who technically qualifies as a member. Still, no true list of this iconic crew would be complete without, at least, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Halls, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and Andrew McCarthy.

While it feels like a term of endearment now, many of the young actors weren't keen on the title at the time. Sheedy always felt she and her female costars were unfairly grouped with their hard partying peers. "The guys would hang out a bit, but we weren't hanging out as one big group. We weren't young actors running around town spending all our time together," Sheedy told The Independent in 2020. "I thought it was a little gossipy and undermining." Ringwald has since described the name as "minimizing." Moore wasn't a fan either. "Nobody wanted to be called a brat. It wasn't trendy or popular," Moore told Vanity Fair in 2024. "It felt like it diminished us, or that we were less serious." But, despite their feelings about the name, there's no denying that these beloved teen films turned them into memorable stars.

When "St. Elmo's Fire" launched actor Demi Moore's career in 1985, there was no way of knowing that she would still be a Hollywood A-lister more than 40 years later. But Moore has since appeared in a long string of critically acclaimed films, including "Ghost" and "A Few Good Men," making her one of the Brat Pack's most famous faces. The entertainment industry can be notoriously hard on aging female stars, but Moore isn' letting Hollywood define her value. She's still taking on adventurous roles, like her 2025 Academy Award-nominated turn in "The Substance," and killing it on the red carpet.

For Moore, embracing aging has meant learning to appreciate the ways her face has changed over the years. "I had such a round face when I was younger, and while I can sometimes miss that certain plumpness and having a full cheek, what I really appreciate are my angles," Moore told Harpers Bazaar in 2026. "My cheekbones, these things that emerged only as I've grown older."

Moore isn't exactly the poster child for aging naturally; she's had a number of cosmetic procedures over the years and side-by-side pictures make Moore's face transformation undeniable. Still, fans often remark that Moore is aging beautifully. "Even with Botox and fillers, whatever she had done, has been done very well," wrote one Reddit user. "She doesn't have that plastic doll look. She still looks somewhat natural."

Perhaps no single person symbolizes the Brat Pack like Molly Ringwald. After all, she was a muse to director John Hughes, who wrote "Sixteen Candles" and "Pretty In Pink" with her in mind. With time, Ringwald's feelings about her relationship with the director have evolved. "It's something that I turn over in my head a lot and try to figure out how that all affected me and I'm still processing all of that and I probably will until the day I die," she explained during an appearance on the "Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky" podcast [timestamp 11:22].

But, though she found fame as a teen star, Ringwald is among the celebrities who are confronting aging with confidence. "I feel like women in their 50s are the new It girls," Ringwald told Vogue in 2024. "I finally feel like I'm starting to get the parts that really I want to have and work with the people that I really want." In recent years, she has had recurring roles in series like "Riverdale" and "Feud."

Meanwhile, she's made it clear that she has no plans for the kind of cosmetic procedures that are so common amongst her Hollywood peers. "I understand the pull, but as an actress I depend on my expressions to get my emotions across," Ringwald explained to StyleList in 2010 [via Life & Style]. "To do something to my face that would inhibit that ability would be a mistake."

Starring roles in "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire" made actor Ally Sheedy a card carrying member of the Brat Pack. She was always passionate about acting, but she believed that, as she aged, she would have to redirect her energy elsewhere. After all, Hollywood has a reputation for ignoring women as they age. "I loved working and I loved making movies," Sheedy told The Independent in 2020. "There was a period in my life that, when I look back on it, I felt very much at ease and comfortable with the whole world. But then that changed for me ... I preferred to work with women, but I didn't have that many opportunities to do so. Hollywood was and is a misogynist culture."

But in recent years, Sheedy has found herself with the opportunity to take on new acting roles that truly thrill her. In 2022, she starred in the series "Single Drunk Female," which she counts among the most memorable of her career. "This was absolutely the group of people, especially the group of women, that I really have always wanted to work with," she told Vanity Fair in 2022. "So when [the opportunity] showed up, I thought, 'Oh, God, great. I want to go back to work.'" Meanwhile, fans remain in awe of how little Sheedy has change since her Brat Pack days. "In 40 years, Ally Sheedy has aged five years," wrote one Reddit user.