Molly Ringwald

A teen screen icon of the '80s, Molly Ringwald transitioned to singing in the 2010s, releasing her debut album Except...Sometimes in 2013. This seemed to be a sudden transition for the actress, but as the daughter of pianist Bob Ringwald, she grew up in a musical household and had been singing since she was a child, appearing on I Wanna Be Loved by You, a 1974 album by her father's group the Fulton Street Jazz Band. Molly was six at the time, and it was the beginning of her professional career. Soon she was on-stage, playing Annie in Los Angeles in 1978 and then transitioning to small roles on television, eventually landing a regular role on the first season of The Facts of Life (the one that ran from 1979-1980). Ringwald was still singing, appearing on a couple of records released by Disney, but her next big break arrived in 1984, when John Hughes cast her as the lead in Sixteen Candles. This romantic teen comedy turned into a huge hit and for a while in the mid-'80s, Molly Ringwald was among the most popular actresses in America, thanks to her roles in Hughes-written films, including 1985's The Breakfast Club and 1986's Pretty in PInk. Toward the end of the decade, Ringwald's purple patch came to a close -- her last big film was Alan Alda's 1990 comedy Betsy's Wedding -- she then moved to Paris, France for a time, thoroughly escaping the spotlight. She returned in the mid-'90s and began appearing semi-regularly on television, including roles on the mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand and the sitcom Townies. Ringwald kept herself busy in the 2000s, threading some Broadway and big-screen roles between her television appearances. She finally landed a hit in 2008 when she played a mother on ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager. That teen drama ran strong for the next five years -- during which time she published two books -- one a self-help/memoir called Getting the Pretty Back; the other a work of fiction called When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories -- and upon its conclusion in 2013, Ringwald released her debut solo album Except...Sometimes on Concord Records.
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