"That one's really pretty," offers the stylist.
"But it's pink," murmurs Molly.
"Got it," the stylist smiles.
"No pink for you these days?" I ask.
"I've kind of had enough pink in my life," Molly deadpans, clacking the dress hanger down in the reject section without a second thought.
Everyone laughs, everyone gets it. That chapter has long since closed.
Many novelists might not mind an extra dose of glamour, and surely few would have such a knee-jerk aversion to the possibility of being portrayed in pink, especially if they're pretty in it. But most other authors in question are not globally known first and foremost as actors, and not a single one of them at the very mention of their name will perpetually glide through the minds of millions as a sweet underdog teenager from the mid-1980s wearing a homemade prom dress that's pink.
Molly Ringwald doesn't shun the past, she just refuses to walk around in it. She happily obliges the legions who question her about the three classic coming-of-age films for which she's best known – Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink, all written by (and the first two directed by) the late great John Hughes. Ringwald recalls that watershed era fondly, and she has attended a few cast reunions, including a tribute to the departed Hughes at the 2010 Oscars. The bio line of Ringwald's recently launched Twitter page even includes the rather apt designation "your former teenage crush".
These days, the 44-year-old Ringwald is talking about her new collection of fiction, a "novel in stories" called When It Happens To You. We've spent the morning roaming around Venice, California, south of Ringwald's home in Santa Monica and just north of Marina Del Rey, where her photoshoot will take place in the afternoon. A street carnival with rides and games is in full swing nearby as we breakfast at Venice's Gjelina restaurant (she orders the Moroccan baked eggs with merguez), then wander the boutiques along trendy Abbot Kinney Boulevard, where Ringwald buys her kids a few gifts (some Japanese mugs with cute animal drawings on them).
Ringwald sparkles as she talks about her family, her work and her life. She's genuinely inquisitive and constantly engaging. Conversations frequently veer off into music and books, two of the subjects closest to her heart (her father is jazz pianist Bob Ringwald). While she's clearly focused on forging ahead, the woman who smiled out as a teen from the cover of a 1986 Time magazine next to the headline "Ain't She Sweet?" finds that the past is never all that far behind.
"It's heavy," Ringwald admits, of walking around with an entire era on her shoulders. She laughs with a hint of frustration. "The more I pursue other things that really, truly matter to me, it's less heavy, but I think the heaviest thing about it is that so many people have so many memories attached to me. It's kind of like this giant collective unrequited love. I wasn't there when they had their first slumber party or their first date or their first kiss, and yet I'm somehow connected to their lives in that way."
by Mark Blackwell, The Guardian | Read more:
Photo: Barry J. Holmes
