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.
Career Highlights: The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink
First Major Screen Credit: Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
Biography
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, All Movie Guide
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.[1][2] Ringwald has two siblings, Elizabeth and Kelly. She started her acting career at age 5, starring in a stage production of Alice in Wonderland as the dormouse. By the time she was 6 years old, she had recorded "I Wanna Be Loved by You", a music album of Dixieland jazz with her father and his group, the Fulton Street Jazz Band.
Acting career
As a young actress, Ringwald appeared in numerous local TV commercials and stage plays in the Sacramento area. In 1978, at the age of 10, she was chosen to play Kate in the West Coast production of Annie, performing in Los Angeles. In 1979, Ringwald appeared in one episode of the TV series Diff'rent Strokes and was selected to become a cast member of the spin-off Facts of Life. Molly played "Molly Parker", a perky, fun-loving student at Eastland Girls School. Although essentially a supporting role, one entire episode, "Molly's Holiday" revolved around her character dealing with the effects of her parents' divorce. After the first thirteen episodes, the producers restructured the show to be more like the popular film Little Darlings,[citation needed] so Ringwald and three other girls were written out of the series in 1980. However, she made a final guest appearance at the start of the second season.
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. 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.[3] Though she played a high school "princess" in her biggest hit, 1985's The Breakfast Club, Ringwald specialized in portrayals of moody, awkward, brainy, angst-filled characters. Among Ringwald's movies are Fresh Horses, The Pick-up Artist and Pretty in Pink. During the mid- to late-1980s, when Ringwald was among Hollywood's top female teens, she appeared on many covers of such publications as Tiger Beat, Teen, Time and Life.
In the early 1990s, Ringwald's high profile movie career went into rapid decline. Ringwald reportedly turned down the female lead roles in Pretty Woman and Ghost.[4] During the 1990s, Ringwald lived in France for four years and appeared in French language films. She performed in Horton Foote's Lilly Dale on Broadway and performed in When Harry Met Sally on the West End in London. In 1994 she starred in the tv adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. Her 1996 return to television, starring on the ABC sitcom Townies, was critically praised, but low viewer ratings resulted in the show's cancellation after nine episodes. She also made one appearance as a blind woman on the critically acclaimed cable series Remember WENN. She also starred with Lara Flynn Boyle and Teri Hatcher in the 1998 made for TV movie Since You've Been Gone. In 2000, she appeared in an episode of Showtime's The Outer Limits.
In 2000 Ringwald appeared in the ensemble restaurant-themed film, In the Weeds[5]; in 2001 she had a cameo in Not Another Teen Movie. In late 2004, she starred in the play Modern Orthodox on Broadway, opposite Jason Biggs and Craig Bierko. In 2006 she starred in the TV movie The Wives He Forgot. Ringwald recently appeared in an episode of the TV series Medium.
Ringwald has appeared in Cabaret, tick, tick... BOOM!, and Enchanted April on Broadway, and in the fall and winter of 2006 she starred as Charity Hope Valentine in the national tour of the Broadway revival of the musical Sweet Charity.[6]
Ringwald is currently starring in the ABC Family network's series The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which debuted on July 1, 2008,[7] playing the title teenager's mother.
Personal life
Ringwald briefly dated actor Anthony Michael Hall during the time when they co-starred in The Breakfast Club. During the filming of Pretty in Pink, Ringwald dated Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank Zappa. She was romantically linked with Beastie Boys member Adam Horovitz in the mid '80s. They dated for about a year. At the time, rumors incorrectly hinted at their marriage.
Ringwald was married to Valery Lameignère, a French writer, in Bordeaux, France, on July 28, 1999; they divorced in 2002. Ringwald 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.[8]
