IIf your formative years were in any way influenced by John Hughes’s ’80s teen movies—crush crushes, triumphant losers, and an eternal longing for an American high school locker—then these actors feel like they’ve been lost. Long-time relatives. Anthony Michael Hall has had a lasting acting career alongside other jobs: He’s a 56-year-old father who looks nothing like his teenage self. But he couldn’t escape the nerdy kids in “Weird Science,” “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club.” If he got tired of recalling movies from 40 years ago, he wouldn’t show them.
Hall’s acting career now spans 48 years. One of the most important lessons his career has taught him is “stay humble because the journey will humble you.” You have to continue to earn your spot. He’s seen it all: fame as a young man, followed by some setbacks in his 20s. Hall struggled to rebuild his career until he was in his 30s, starring in the early 2000s sci-fi series The Dead Zone. He’s had his highs – he’s worked for directors including Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan – and his lows (he was in Freddy’s Got Fingered – watch this 2001 comedy , Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote, “is one of the worst films of my lifetime”). This is the life of a steadily working actor.
When we spoke via Zoom, Hall was warm and polite from his home in Los Angeles, carefully dodging questions about his support for Donald Trump in a 2020 interview (I asked him if he worked in a liberal industry , met with any resistance; he insisted he was apolitical and didn’t want to talk about it). He recently completed filming as a villain in the Amazon drama Reacher, based on the Lee Child thriller. Last week, the Netflix movie Trigger Warning was released. Hall plays another villain, a corrupt senator in small-town America who teams up with Special Forces commando Jessica Alba to avenge her father’s death. Villains are fun, he said. “You can pull out all the stops. I think it’s important to inject some simplicity and humor.
Hall’s first role at the age of eight was with Steve Allen, who would become a pioneer in stand-up comedy. His mother, a jazz singer, heard about it through a friend, and Hall got the part. As a child, he gained attention by making his relatives laugh by imitating them. He lived with his mother in Manhattan, and when she couldn’t find a babysitter, he sometimes accompanied her to shows. He was in his pajamas and being attended to by a waitress in the back of a jazz club. “I think back now on the courage she had, like so many mothers, especially single mothers. This feeling of bravery and really walking in the life of an artist is something I learned from my mother.
After the show ended, Hall continued to audition for other jobs. At the age of 13, he was cast in a movie called “Six Pack” starring Diane Lane and Kenny Rogers, which didn’t do well, but it did get him noticed. His next film was a hit as Chevy Chase’s son in National Lampoon’s Vacation. Hughes wrote the screenplay for Sixteen Candles, his directorial debut, and cast Hall in his next two films, Strange Science and The Breakfast Club. Like Molly Ringwald, Hall became something of a muse with his comedic timing and nerdy yet angelic appearance.
“He’s very collaborative, funny and easy-going,” Hall said. “He’s not serious or nervous about what he says or how he expresses himself. We’ll often do two or three of his ways, and then we’ll try something else. In between movies, they’ll talk on the phone about the movie and music, or Hall would go to the Hughes house and hang out with him, his wife, and their two sons. “I was like a third son in their family. We would watch everything from Richard Pryor to. Old comedies, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello.
Hughes was in his mid-30s, but his films had a huge impact on Hollywood’s depiction of growing up. Why is he so nice to teenagers? Hall believes that as an adult, Hughes only remembered his youth keenly, never forgetting what it was like to be the middle child or wanting to escape the Chicago suburbs. “Everyone ends up a little better than they started, and that’s beautiful,” Hall said. “Everyone has some comeuppance, while everyone is working through their own insecurities and vulnerabilities.”
If basic adolescent emotions are well represented, many other elements of Hughes’ film—racism, sexism, homophobia, a casual attitude toward rape—are not. “Yes,” Hall said with a smile. “A lot of things don’t age well with time, I admit that. But given the time and spirit in which they were made, it’s certainly not meant to be offensive. But some things definitely don’t age well with time. We We evolve over time.
The films made Hall a star, even though he was still too young to achieve the “brat bag” label ascribed to others such as Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore and Rob Lowe. Hall did not appear in the 1985 New York magazine article that coined the term, and he declined to appear in “The Kid,” McCarthy’s new documentary about the era. But he was sensitive to the need to break away from Hughes, so he turned down roles in Ferris Bueller’s “Day Off” and “Pretty in Pink,” both huge hits. Does he regret it? “It’s just that I think it hurt John in a way,” he said. “But it wasn’t intentional.” They didn’t speak for many years but reconciled before Hughes’ death in 2009. matter.
He landed a spot on Saturday Night Live — a daunting prospect for any comedian, let alone a 17-year-old with no stand-up experience. “It was daunting because it was rock, drama and comedy all rolled into one, and there was some superstar act or band every week.” It was competitive and hard work, but Hall loved it. “I’m so grateful to be a part of this show even though I’m on probably the worst season ever, maybe even the worst season ever. Still, it’s exciting. No one’s getting back to him, and it’s frustrating He was frustrated. Around the same time, his first post-Hughes film, the action thriller Out of bounds, was struggling.
Hall found fame difficult to deal with. “I joke with my family that it took me 20 years to get through the first 20 years of my life. By the time I was in my early 40s, it started to make sense. When you start to get recognition, it’s a thing It’s a weird thing, especially at that age, when you’re already self-aware. It was like my adolescence movie trilogy. He thanked his family – his mother remarried when he was 12 years old. His stepfather was his agent – keeping him grounded, but by the time he was filming “Saturday Night Live” he was living on his own, making a lot of money and renting a big house, but he was too young to get it. to my driver’s license, so I took the bus to work. “My life was surreal. “
Moving to Los Angeles soon after, he lived for a time at the famous Chateau Marmont Hotel. “It was exciting. Fun. How was he partying? “Yeah. I won’t deny it. He didn’t do drugs, but he did have a drinking problem. “I had to keep that under control because I was a little bit crazy as a kid. wild. The tabloid coverage at the time was unflattering—a problem Hall has faced in recent years. In 2017, he was convicted of assaulting a neighbor during a dispute, and in 2020, he berated other guests in a hotel pool. After the video was shown, he apologized. “I didn’t want to settle anything,” he said.
Hall eventually left the industry for a few years in his early 20s, moving back to New York to hang out with friends and live a more normal life. “Growing up in New York in the ’80s and ’90s, clubs were a big thing,” he said. That’s when he got help for alcoholism and began treatment. He also met his biological father for the first time, who had not been in his life since he was a child. “It was really bold of me to do that, but it was a good thing. It was so healing to meet him and finally realize that part of me.
Is he worried that taking time off will damage his career? “The idea is: What if people forget about you? I struggled with some of them. But mine [stepfather] Really good. He would say, “Hang in there, keep working hard, stay accessible.” His point: Keep working. That’s what Hall did. He had a lucky start early on, but now he has to learn “the value of what’s happened to me, and that’s earned through hard work. I’ve got to really earn it.” At a certain point, the things you did as a child no longer work, so I went through an awkward period in my 20s where I struggled to move on.
He played Winona Ryder’s bully boyfriend in “Edward Scissorhands,” and has since worked in small movies and TV shows before landing a starring role in “The Dead Zone.” He’s been working steadily since then, including roles in The Dark Knight and Netflix’s Gears of War. In recent years, Hall has returned to comedy, starring in the TV series “The Goldbergs” and “Community,” and co-creating a TV series with friend Robert Downey Jr.
His career taught him that he was “just a small piece of the puzzle and no one can work alone”. He’s weathered a career as a child star, thorny headlines and decades in an industry that “is a tough industry for a lot of people, and it eats people up.” There are no promises or guarantees, but I thank God that I have the resources to persevere. You have to be thick-skinned and not take things too personally. People work hard to be employed. Nothing is guaranteed. You are only as good as your last job – so you have to keep proving yourself.
