What actors were part of the ‘Brat Pack’? 1980s teen idols and the movies that made them famous

Andrew McCarthy’s new documentary looking back on a group of young actors dubbed the Brat Pack premiered at Tribeca Festival at the weekend and is due to go on general release on 13 June via Hulu.

For those who might not be too familiar with the word, a brat is the term used to describe a badly-behaved child or rebellious adolescent and during the mid-to-late 1980s, a handful of films centered around the coming-of-age subgenre came out - most of which with the same cast of fresh-faced bright young things playing high school misfits and nonconformists trying to make sense of the world, rebelling against authority and the status quo.

Who invented the term ‘Brat Pack’?

The term Brat Pack first appeared in an article written for New York Magazine by David Blum in June 1985 and is a play on words referring to a previous generation of rebels without a cause - Hollywood’s hard-drinking, womanizing hell-raisers, the Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford.

The cover story piece featured a photograph of Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Rob Lowe - the three stars of Joel Schumacher’s St Elmo’s Fire. Blum describes “a group of boys who seemed to exude a magnetic force - young studs, all under 25 years old, decked out in Risky Business sunglasses and trendish sport jackets and designer T-shirts, chugging their beers. The prettiest of the girls would find some excuse to walk by the table, and they would eye the boys as languorously as they possibly could, hoping for an invitation to join them.

“If Rob Lowe seemed to be inviting all too much attention from the girls, Judd Nelson acted as though he wanted nothing to do with it,” Blum’s article continued. “His fame, too, helped attract them. They recognized his tough-guy looks from his role as the wrong-way kid in The Breakfast Club and sought his attention. Only one of the famous young boys seemed to take the attention in stride - perhaps because he grew up the son of a famous actor, Martin Sheen. Just 23 years old, Emilio Estevez looks like his famous father and is a star on his own. He played the young punk in Repo Man and the jock in The Breakfast Club. His sweet smile of innocence drew still more women to the table, and he could not resist them”.

When the article was published, Lowe, Estevez and Nelson were mortified. They hated the Brat Pack tag and resented that they were being lumped together rather than being recognized as actors in their own right. Nor were they too pleased at being painted as partying, self-absorbed opportunists - unruly, unreliable and unprofessional. They certainly didn’t seem themselves that way.

Today, McCarthy feels just as embittered, recalling in his documentary: “I just remember seeing that cover and thinking, ‘Oh f***’” while Lowe succinctly labels it “a disaster”.

The fact is that the Brat Pack tag wasn’t only about Lowe, Estevez and Nelson - it included several of their peers who starred alongside them in the coming-of-age movies of the day. Other members whose names regularly crop up include: Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and McCarthy himself.

The most well-known Brat Pack movies include: The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire and Sixteen Candles. Most of the members went on to bigger things later in their career and those that did agree to talk to McCarthy about being part of the ‘Brat Pack cult’. Estevez, Sheedy, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Lea Thompson and Jon Cryer - many of whom McCarthy hadn’t seen or heard from in 30 years or more, all concur that they were deeply irritated by the tag.

Interestingly, McCarthy also gets the chance to air his grievances and ask for explanations from Blum, who left New York Magazine in 2000.

We’ll leave the last word with Rob Lowe, who tried to put his Brat Pack experience into words in a 2019 interview: “Here’s really what it’s like. When you come up with people like that and you work with some of them, I look at it as: that was my fraternity - they are my fraternity brothers. We’ve all gone on to other things in our lives, we’re in very different places and doing different things but when we get together, it’s like we are back in the fraternity. It’s like we are 18 years old again”.