Molly Ringwald
By Caroline Porkert
Molly Ringwald, the teen queen of the eighties, is a witty, smart, and talented woman. Not only is she an actress, but a successful novelist and memoirist. She has released music, has three children, yet she continues to act and inspire many people, young and old.
Molly first and foremost was a singer. She sang with her father's jazz band from a young age and, when she was ten years old, a friend of her father's suggested that she try out for the west coast's first production of Annie. She flew out to California and got a part in the chorus. It was the first professional job she had. Before, she had done local theater for fun. After Annie she auditioned for a show that would become The Facts of Life. She got an agent and landed her first movie at age thirteen. When she was fifteen she met writer/ director John Hughes. He had written the script for a movie he wanted to make, Sixteen Candles, with Molly's picture hanging above his desk as the inspiration for the main character, Samantha. He gave Molly the script and asked her to play the part. Molly read over the script, loved it, and Sixteen Candles was in motion.
This would be the start to Molly's most successful period of acting. It was also the start to John Hughes' career, a young script writer and director. Molly starred in three wildly successful movies made by John: Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), and Pretty in Pink (1986). These movies earned her titles like "Teen Sensation", and landed her picture on the front of many magazines, including Time. She was often admired because of her contrast to most female actors in Hollywood at the time. She was not a generic, curvy, blonde beauty, but a fiery redhead misfit that a lot of teen girls could relate to.
After these movies, Molly decided to go a different way in her acting, looking for more adult roles. She starred in The Pick-Up Artist in 1988, and as the Mom on Secret Life of the American Teenager, a successful contemporary television show, in 2008. Molly's career continues to flourish and grow, and her legacy in acting and bringing a realistic image of young girls to Hollywood will never be forgotten.
Molly Ringwald is, without a doubt, a confident individual. So it's no surprise then that that is one of her main pieces of advice in acting. Once, when asked what her one piece of advice would be to young aspiring actors, she said, "Be confident. Have confidence in yourself and know that people believe in you and know you can do it." Molly knows that being confident in who she is is what got her so far in her career. Had she not been confident about who she was, what she looked like, or how she acted, she never would have landed the parts that she did or performed up to par.
Molly always loved it when she could have input in how her character acted or what lines they said. She really enjoyed working with John Hughes because, "If you wanted to change something or make it your own, John completely encouraged it. Subsequently, when I've worked with other writer-directors, they get so precious about every single line, you can't change anything. There was none of that with John- he was so free." Other directors encouraged this too; When she worked with Warren Beatty, she got to break down the entire script, and even wrote a scene of her own that was put in the film. She loved taking that time to make sure everything her character did was organic.
Molly doesn't generally practice method acting.
"... Which, from my understanding, involves "becoming" the characters to a certain extent in your daily life. I have always tried to keep the two very separate... I would, however, try to find people to explain what (a situation) feels like to them and substitute a similar feeling from my own life that feels comparable. Additionally, my imagination and powers of observation have helped me immeasurably in acting."
So even though she does not partake in any activity her character would do, she uses her imagination and experiences from her own life to filter her personal emotion through her character. This could be considered a type of method acting, just not to the extreme.
Any way that she does it though, Molly's acting methods have obviously worked, and promoted her to become one of the most successful actresses of our time. She has inspired many young girls across generations to be their true selves and not bend to the wants and pressures of others. An accomplished and serious actress, mother, author, and singer, Molly Ringwald has a lot to be proud of.
................……………………………………………………………………………………………………
I have learned quite a bit about acting from my research on Molly Ringwald. She has many methods that have opened my eyes up about the world of acting, and how so many people do it and do it well. One observation I have made is that no matter what you do or how you do it, it is best to do it organically. Meaning that, if you don't act like who you really are and pretend to be someone you're not, on the stage or off (when you are auditioning for a part), you are less likely to succeed and seem real. Molly Ringwald was different from most other young actors of her time, but that didn't stop her from becoming very successful. Everyone knew that she was a fiery redhead who would speak her mind, so she did not have to pretend otherwise. This opened her up to loads of opportunities. It turned out that everybody loved who she really was. Since she didn't have to pretend to be somebody else, onscreen or off, her performance was so much better than if she had faked a different person.
I know now that being confident in who I want my character to be is the best move in this play. I understand that confidence is the key to success, and will filter all of my confidence into this production. Working with my lines and tweaking them to what fits my voice will help me enormously, as it is better for my character to come from within me to sound and feel organic. I will be who I want to be onstage, and think about situations from my real life that are parallel to any experiences my character is going through, to make my delivery sound real. If I cannot think of any situation experienced by me or others, I will use my imagination to understand my character's emotions.