The 1985 John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club is widely regarded as one of the most important films of that decade, and it is often listed as an example of one of the greatest films ever made.
But in 2018, Molly admitted that she’d been left troubled by the “inappropriate” nature of the movie after she’d rewatched it with her then-10-year-old daughter Mathilda.
“He never apologizes for any of it, but, nevertheless, he gets the girl in the end,” she concludes, referencing the fact that Claire kisses Bender at the end of the movie.
“They couldn’t even ask me to do it — I don’t think it was permitted by law to ask a minor — but even having another person pretend to be me was embarrassing to me and upsetting to my mother, and she said so,” Molly added. “That scene stayed, though.”
And in a recent interview with the Times, Molly has doubled down on how poorly her past work has aged as she admitted that she wouldn’t let her daughter pursue an acting career as a child because of her own experience.
Reflecting on her own experience as a child star in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Molly said of Mathilda, now 20: “We wouldn’t let Mathilda pursue acting when she was a child, as we wanted her to concentrate on being a kid. She fought us on that — she’s still kind of mad about it, but it was the right decision.”