The daughter of jazz musician Bob Ringwald, Molly Ringwald made her screen debut in the TV sitcom The Facts of Life in 1979. After just one season she left the show to pursue a film career, first appearing in the 1982 movie Tempest. Between 1982 and 1986 she was a staple of Hollywood movies about suburban teens, including Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. This made her an acknowledged member of the "Brat Pack," an unofficial group of popular young actors that included Demi Moore and Rob Lowe. Ringwald's other films include Betsy's Wedding (1990, with Joe Pesci) and Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999, starring Helen Mirren), and her TV appearances include the 1994 mini-series based on Stephen King's The Stand and the series The Secret Life of the American Teenager (she plays the mom!), which began in 2008.
Ringwald is also an accomplished stage actor, and in 2006 she began a national tour of Sweet Charity, in the lead role made famous by Broadway star Gwen Verdon.
From the mid- to late '80s, slender, carrot-topped, and luscious-lipped Molly Ringwald was the reigning teen queen of mainstream films. At the peak of her popularity, Ringwald was on the cover of Time magazine and even had groups of adolescent girl fans, called "Ringlets," who would emulate her every move.
The daughter of jazzman Bob Ringwald, the leader of the Great Pacific Jazz Band, Ringwald was raised in Sacramento, CA, where she was born February 14, 1968. She started performing as a toddler, although not as an actress. She embarked on a very early and brief career as a singer after her parents discovered that she had a remarkable ability to perfectly match the tune and phrasing of almost any song she heard. Ringwald began singing jazz with her father at state fairs, and by the age of six, she already had a jazz album, I Wanna Be Loved By You--Molly Sings.
In the meantime, Ringwald began to develop an interest in acting: she was four when she started hanging around the local community theater and five when she started getting small parts, including the role of a preacher's child in Truman Capote's The Grass Harp. At the age of eight, Ringwald appeared on The New Mickey Mouse Club. Encouraged by her talent and driven by her father's desire to get better bookings for his band, Ringwald's family moved to L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. In 1979, the actress won a part on Norman Lear's sitcom The Facts of Life. Ringwald only lasted a season before she was let go, but her television work paved the way for subsequent screen roles.
In 1982, Ringwald made an auspicious film debut in Paul Mazursky's acclaimed Tempest, earning a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of John Cassavetes' daughter. In order to prepare for the role, Mazursky had Ringwald and her family move to a flat in New York's Greenwich Village to help her develop the necessary New York accent and attitude. Her performance in the film attracted the attention of screenwriter/aspiring director John Hughes who cast her as the protagonist of Sixteen Candles (1984), his wistful chronicle of suburban teenaged angst. The film was a hit, and so was Ringwald. Hughes would cast her in two more teen films, The Breakfast Club (1985) and Pretty in Pink (1986), both of which were hugely popular with teen audiences. In addition to a solid film career, Ringwald -- who had become a household name -- also occasionally appeared in television movies.
Despite her continued success through the early '90s, Ringwald felt her life had reached a crossroads; by 1992, she decided to sell her house, put her personal effects in storage, pack up seven suitcases, and exchange life in the L.A. fast lane for a more romantic existence in Paris, where she was busy shooting Seven Sundays (released in 1994). Ringwald, who had learned French while attending a French high school in Los Angeles, remained there, dividing her time between reading (she has been a voracious reader since childhood when she and her siblings would read stories to her blind father), writing short stories and screenplays, cooking, and hanging out with her French husband. She occasionally continued to act in American and internationally produced films and television projects that include George Hickenlooper's Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (1993), Stephen King's The Stand (1994), and Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999). Ringwald also continued to do stage work, appearing in an acclaimed 1998 off-Broadway production of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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Molly Ringwald
Ringwald in Greece
Born
Molly Kathleen Ringwald
February 18, 1968 (1968-02-18)(age 43) Roseville, California, United States
Molly Kathleen Ringwald was born in Roseville, California, just outside of Sacramento, the daughter of Adele Edith (née Frembd), a housewife and chef, and Robert Scott "Bob" Ringwald, a blind jazz pianist.[4][5] Ringwald has two siblings, Elizabeth and Kelly. She started her acting career at age five, starring in a stage production of Alice in Wonderland as the Dormouse. The next year, she recorded "I Wanna Be Loved by You," a music album of Dixieland jazz with her father and his group, the Fulton Street Jazz Band.[6]
Acting career
In 1978, at the age of 10, she was chosen to play Kate in the West Coast production of Annie, performing in Los Angeles.[7]
In 1979, Ringwald appeared in the TV series Diff'rent Strokes and was selected to become a cast member of the spin-off Facts of Life. She played "Molly Parker," a perky, fun-loving student at Eastland Girls School. Although she had essentially a supporting role, one entire episode, "Molly's Holiday" revolved around her character dealing with the effects of her parents' divorce.
In 1980, Ringwald performed as a lead vocalist on two Disney albums. On the patriotic album Yankee Doodle Mickey, Ringwald sang "This Is My Country", "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Bless America". She later performed one track on a Disney Christmas album.[8] Turning toward motion pictures, she found her breakout role in Sixteen Candles (1984). Molly Ringwald was a member of the so-called Brat Pack of 1980s teen actors.[9]
In the early 1990s, Ringwald reportedly turned down the female lead roles in Pretty Woman and Ghost.[10] In 1994, she starred in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. In 1996, she played a leading role in the film Malicious as Melissa Nelson, a disturbed woman who has an affair with a college star baseball player. 1996 saw her return to television, starring on the ABC sitcom Townies. She also made one appearance a a blind woman on the critically acclaimed cable series Remember WENN. She starred with Lara Flynn Boyle and Teri Hatcher in the 1998 made for television film Since You've Been Gone. In 2000, she appeared in an episode of Showtime's The Outer Limits.
Ringwald is currently starring in the ABC Family network's series The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which debuted on July 1, 2008,[14] playing the title teenager's mother.
Personal life
Ringwald was married to Valery Lameignère, a French writer, in Bordeaux, France, on July 28, 1999; they divorced in 2002.[15] She married Panio Gianopoulos, a Greek-American writer and book editor, in 2007. They have a daughter, Mathilda Ereni (born October 22, 2003), and twins, Adele Georgiana and Roman Stylianos (born July 10, 2009). Her pregnancy was written into the storyline of The Secret Life of the American Teenager.[16]
^ Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe, "'Too Close for Comfort': American Beauty and the Incest Motif", Cinema Journal, 44, Number 1, Fall 2004, pp. 69–93. University of Texas Press.
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