Molly Ringwald Says She Was "Taken Advantage of" as a Young Actress in Hollywood

Molly Ringwald is getting candid about the difficulties she faced as a young actress. 

While looking back on her experiences in Hollywood as a teen and young adult, the Pretty in Pink star shared insight into her complicated relationship with the industry.

"I never really felt like I was part of a community when I was in Hollywood, just because I was so young," Molly said on the May 27 episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. "I wasn't into going out to clubs. I feel like I'm more social now than I was then. I was just too young."

And despite being shy and introverted, the Sixteen Candles actress admitted she was put in some concerning situations.

"I was taken advantage of," Molly shared. "You can't be a young actress in Hollywood and not have predators around."

"I was definitely in questionable situations," she continued. "But I do have an incredible survival instinct and a pretty big super-ego and managed to figure out a way to protect myself. But it can be harrowing."

And now, Molly—who starred in several genre-defining films by John Hughes in the 1980s—uses her past experience to advocate for her and husband Panio Gianopoulos' three kids, Mathilda, 20 and 14-year-old twins Adele and Roman.

"I have a 20-year-old daughter now who is going into the same profession, even though I did everything I could to convince her to do something else," the 58-year-old explained. "My parents didn't know anything about show business." 

Molly has previously shared insight into how her perspective on the films has evolved, with her pointing out that while rewatching some of her most iconic films in 2018, she picked up on the more questionable plotlines she had overlooked back in the ‘80s, such as when her character Claire was sexually harassed by Bender (Judd Nelson) in The Breakfast Club.

"If I sound overly critical, it's only with hindsight," she wrote in a personal essay for The New Yorker. "Back then, I was only vaguely aware of how inappropriate much of John's writing was, given my limited experience and what was considered normal at the time."

And the older she got, the more critically she examined those films.

"I think, as everyone says and I do believe is true, that times were different and what was acceptable then is definitely not acceptable now and nor should it have been then, but that's sort of the way that it was," Molly told NPR that same year. "I feel very differently about the movies now and it's a difficult position for me to be in because there's a lot that I like about them. Of course I don't want to appear ungrateful to John Hughes, but I do oppose a lot of what is in those movies."