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Molly Ringwald dazzled with her youthful charm at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this week, capturing attention with her vibrant presence.
The celebrated redhead graced the premiere of “Run Amok” during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, held at the Eccles Center Theater on January 26. Her appearance coincides with her recent comments on the legacy of John Hughes, the iconic director who shaped much of her early career.
At 57, Ringwald remains synonymous with the celebrated films of Hughes, having starred in his beloved teen classics such as “Sixteen Candles” (1984), “The Breakfast Club” (1985), and “Pretty in Pink” (1986). Reflecting on these enduring works, she revealed that Hughes was adamantly against remakes of his movies.
In a conversation with PEOPLE, Molly shared, “Well, they can’t be [remade] because they can’t be made without the permission of [the late] John Hughes, and he didn’t want the films to be remade. And I don’t think that they should be really.”
Molly told PEOPLE: ‘Well, they can’t be [remade] because they can’t be made without the permission of [the late] John Hughes, and he didn’t want the films to be remade. And I don’t think that they should be really.
‘I feel like if somebody does something, I would prefer that they do something … that takes from [The] Breakfast Club and then builds on [it], and represents this generation’s issues rather than to try to recreate what was of a different time.’
Molly Ringwald looked youthful at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this week
The redheaded movie star was attending the Run Amok premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at Eccles Center Theater on January 26
The Breakfast Club starred Molly, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall.
They played five teenagers from different high school cliques who are forced to spend Saturday detention together and work out their differences.
Molly previously shared why she believes the movie has endured for over 40 years, attributing it to the lack of ‘vampires, zombies and werewolves’.
She told Variety: ‘The Breakfast Club has endured for decades because there are no vampires in it.Â
‘Any movie with teenagers now has to have a vampire, a zombie or a werewolf. I think that’s one of the reasons it has this lasting quality, because they haven’t been able to replicate it. It’s not for lack of trying.Â
‘[The studio] gave John an awful lot of freedom for a relatively untested director.’
Last year Ringwald said she was ‘taken advantage of’ in the early days of her career.
The actress insisted that she was ‘too young’ for Hollywood fame and alleged that any young starlet on the film scene has to deal with having ‘predators’ around them.
Ringwald in the 1985 John Hughes movie The Breakfast ClubÂ
The film, written and directed by Hughes, took in $51.5 million from a reported $1 million budget and still has legions of fans to this day
Speaking on the ‘WTF with Marc Maron’ podcast, she said: ‘I never really felt like I was part of a community when I was in Hollywood, just because I was so young, really. I wasn’t into going out to clubs.
‘I feel like I’m more social now than I was then. I was just too young.
‘I was taken advantage of. You can’t be a young actress in Hollywood and not have predators around.’
The ‘Pretty In Pink’ star – who started out by starring in a national production of ‘Annie’ in the late 1970s but has now carved out a secondary career as a translator – revealed she had ‘definitely been in questionable situations’ during the height of her fame and tried ‘so hard’ to steer her daughter in any direction other than showbiz.
Ringwald at the IMDb Portrait Studio at Acura House of Energy on location at Sundance 2026 on January 25
Molly – who has 20-year-old Mathilda with husband Panio Gianopoulos – explained: ‘I need incredible survival instinct and a pretty big superego to figure out a way to protect myself. But, yeah, it can be harrowing.
‘And I have a 20-year-old daughter now who is going into the same profession, even though I did everything I could to convince her to do something else. And it’s hard.’
Earlier this year, Molly claimed that there were certain elements of ‘The Breakfast Club’ – which follows a group of five teenagers in detention – that ‘hadn’t aged well’ since its 1985 release.
She told The Times: ‘There is a lot that I really love about the movie but there are elements that haven’t aged well — like Judd Nelson’s character, John Bender, who essentially sexually harasses my character. I’m glad we’re able to look at that and say things are truly different now.’