Brat Pack icon Molly Ringwald quit Hollywood after 'dog collar' scene 'blindsided' her

Forget Justin Bieber’s ‘Beliebers’ – back in the 1980s, it was all about Molly Ringwald and her dedicated army of fans, the ‘Ringlets’.

Molly, the golden girl of the so-called ‘Brat Pack’ of young actors, was the ultimate teen movie queen, starring in director John Hughes’ timeless classics, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink.

But just as her career was soaring to new heights, she was left shaken by a disturbing and demeaning audition that prompted her to quit Hollywood and move to France.

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Molly, who turns 55 today (Monday February 18), already had a string of hit movies under her belt when she endured the traumatic audition at the age of 20.

She said she was “blindsided” when an unnamed director asked her to let the male lead put a dog collar around her neck – which wasn’t in the script.

Writing in the New Yorker, she said: “I was asked by the director, in a somewhat rhetorical manner, to let the lead actor put a dog collar around my neck.

“This was not remotely in the pages I had studied; I could not even fathom how it made sense in the story.”

Molly’s baffled opposite felt just as uncomfortable, she said.

“The actor was a friend of mine, and I looked into his eyes with panic,” she added.

“He looked back at me with an ‘I’m really sorry’ expression on his face as his hands reached out toward my neck.”

“I don’t know if the collar ever made it on me because that’s the closest I’ve had to an out-of-body experience.

“I’d like to think that I just walked out, but, more than likely, there’s an old VHS tape, disintegrating in a drawer somewhere, of me trying to remember lines with a dog collar around my neck in front of a young man I once had a crush on.”

Molly said the experience led to her “sobbing in the parking lot”.

Upset, she told her agent about what had happened, but he apparently made light of it.

She added: “And, when I got home and called my agent to tell him what happened, he laughed and said, ‘Well, I guess that’s one for the memoirs.’ I fired him and moved to Paris not long after.”

It was all enough to put Molly off the whole Hollywood scene.

She gave up the glitz and glamour of Tinsel Town and moved to Paris.

Molly was in the ‘Brat Pack’, a group of young actors who were popular at the time. Other members included Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, and Ally Sheedy.

She has been described as late director John Hughes’ muse and once admitted having a “mad crush” on him.

After moving to Paris, she continued to star in films and TV shows, flying back to the US to work.

She later returned to live in the US and has owned homes in California and New York.

In 1999 she married Valéry Lameignère, a French writer, in Bordeaux, but they divorced in 2002. She married Panio Gianopoulos, a Greek-American writer, in 2007. They have three children together.

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk