FROM THE BRAT PACK & BACK!

ANDREW MCCARTHY'S NEW DOCUMENTARY EXPLORES THE UPS AND DOWNS OF THE YOUNG STARS WHO TOOK 1980s HOLLYWOOD

- STORM By GILLIAN TELLING

In 1985 Andrew McCarthy became part of the hottest group of young actors ever to hit Hollywood all at once when he appeared in St. Elmo’s Fire. “It changed my life,” McCarthy, 61, tells People of the coming-of-age drama about seven college grads that also starred Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Mare Winningham. The film was a major success that didn’t just change McCarthy’s life—it changed the film industry. “Suddenly Hollywood realized kids go to the movies way more than adults,” he says. “Almost overnight, every Friday there would be a new movie for young people.”

He thinks the rapid change rubbed some people the wrong way. “The old Hollywood guard resented that,” he says. “They were like, ‘Wait a minute, who are these young punks coming along?!’” So when a New York magazine article about his young colleagues came out in 1985 calling them “Hollywood’s Brat Pack” (a play on Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.’s Rat Pack of Hollywood’s golden age), the dominoes started to fall. Ironically the story was initially supposed to have been a profile on Estevez, son of actor Martin Sheen and star of The Breakfast Club, which had been released four months before St. Elmo’s Fire and featured three of the same actors. In fact McCarthy was barely mentioned in the article, but he became a part of the club by association in St. Elmo’s Fire and later in Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero.