The Breakfast Club Cast: Where Are They Now in 2026?
Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. Five kids walked into that library in 1985. Forty years later, all five sat on a stage in Chicago together for the first time in those forty years. But the question that brought you here is not what happened that Saturday. It is what happened to them after.
As of August 2026: Hall starred in Reacher and turned up in Wednesday. Ringwald has two films out in 2026. Estevez is writing and directing Young Guns 3. Sheedy teaches theater at the City College of New York. Nelson keeps the lowest profile of the five. And in April 2025, all of them sat together for the first time in forty years. Here is where the Breakfast Club ended up.
Anthony Michael Hall (Brian Johnson)
The brain turned out to be the one who never stopped working. After The Breakfast Club, Hall joined Saturday Night Live at seventeen, the youngest cast member in the show’s history, and spent the decades that followed compiling one of the steadiest resumes in the cast: six seasons leading The Dead Zone, a supporting role in The Dark Knight, and a return to the slasher franchise as Tommy Doyle in Halloween Kills. The recent run has been his best yet. He played Zachary Beck in Season 3 of Amazon’s Reacher in 2025, then took a guest role in the second season of Netflix’s Wednesday as cadet leader Ron Kruger, 35 years after appearing in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands. A series alongside Robert Downey Jr., Singularity, was reported in development in 2024. At 58, the kid who wrote the essay for all five of them is still the busiest one in the room.
Molly Ringwald (Claire Standish)
Ringwald was on the cover of Time magazine at 18 and was the face of John Hughes’s run through the 80s. After Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink, she did something nobody in the Brat Pack predicted: she moved to Paris, made French-language films, and started translating French literature into English. Her translations include Philippe Besson’s Lie with Me and Vanessa Schneider’s My Cousin Maria Schneider. She came back to American screens for a five-season run on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, played Archie’s mother, Mary Andrews, on Riverdale, and took the role of Joanne Carson in FX’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans in 2024. As of August 2026, she has two films out this year: Run Amok and One Night Only. The princess became a working writer and a working actress, which is harder than being either one alone.
Emilio Estevez (Andrew Clark)
The athlete became a director. After the one-two punch of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire in 1985, Estevez rode the decade out as a movie star: Stakeout, both Young Guns pictures, and then three Mighty Ducks films that made him a second-generation household name. He stepped behind the camera for Bobby in 2006 and The Way in 2010, the latter a pilgrimage drama starring his father Martin Sheen. He reprised Gordon Bombay for Disney+’s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers before departing the series in 2021. In March 2025, he announced from the New Mexico State Capitol that he is directing Young Guns 3: Dead or Alive, co-written with John Fusco, and starring again as Billy the Kid, with Lou Diamond Phillips and Christian Slater returning. At 64, he had been the holdout at earlier reunion gatherings, finally showing up at C2E2 in Chicago in April 2025.
Ally Sheedy (Allison Reynolds)
The basket case took the sharpest turn of anyone in the cast. After WarGames, The Breakfast Club, and Short Circuit, Sheedy won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead in High Art (1998), playing a role built to demolish anything left of the girl-next-door image. She starred in Single Drunk Female on Freeform from 2022 to 2023. But the real pivot came off screen. Since 2021, she has taught at the City College of New York, passing the craft on instead of just practicing it. In January 2026, she joined CCNY’s first Film Advisory Board. She also executive produced and starred in the drama By the Roots, due in 2026. At 64, she works as a literary editor, teaches undergrads, and showed up in Chicago with the rest of them. The one who came to detention because she had nothing better to do found plenty.
Judd Nelson (John Bender)
Nelson had the biggest year of his career in 1985, with The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire landing within months of each other. He spent the late 90s on Suddenly Susan, played Billy Beretti on Empire, and has continued working in independent films and voice roles, including a voice part in the 2026 video game Romeo is a Dead Man. He keeps a lower profile than his four castmates and has not had a major studio role in years. But he showed up in Chicago. When the five of them sat together at C2E2 in April 2025, Bender was in the room. The criminal never did learn how to be punctual, but he got there.
John Kapelos (Carl Reed)
The janitor who saw through Vernon outlasted nearly all of them on screen. Kapelos came out of Second City and appeared in three John Hughes films before building a decades-long television career. As of 2024, he held a recurring role as Konstantin Meleounis on Days of Our Lives and guest-starred on The Lincoln Lawyer. He teaches improv and acting workshops and runs Carpuzi Records, an independent label that produces recordings with Second City alumni. At 70, the man who delivered the line that turned Vernon inside out is still working the room.
Paul Gleason (Richard Vernon)
Gleason built a career out of being magnificently, authoritatively wrong: Clarence Beeks in Trading Places, Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson in Die Hard, and Vernon himself. He got to parody the role in Not Another Teen Movie, and he was there in 2005 when the MTV Movie Awards handed the film its Silver Bucket of Excellence, standing with his castmates one last time. He died the following year, on May 27, 2006, at 67, of pleural mesothelioma.
Remember when the five of them sat on the floor of that library and said the quiet parts out loud, one by one, until nobody in the room was pretending anymore? Forty years later, they sat on a stage in Chicago and did it again. Some reunions are just photo ops. That one was not.
The honest bottom line
Hughes gave all five of them the same amount of dignity in 1985, and the scoreboard forty years later is more even than anyone had a right to expect. One of them directs. One of them translates French novels. One of them teaches college. One of them is all over streaming television. One of them showed up and sat quietly in the corner, which is exactly what Bender would have done. The vice principal is gone. The janitor is still working. And the movie Hughes never got to make, the one about what happened to them as adults, turned out to be real life. It just took forty years to write itself. Forty years of five careers is a lot of ground to verify, so our sourcing rules live here.
FAQ
Did the Breakfast Club cast ever reunite?
Yes. All five principals sat together for the first time in forty years at C2E2 in Chicago on April 12, 2025, for a 40th anniversary panel.
What is Anthony Michael Hall doing now?
As of 2026, Hall starred in Season 3 of Amazon’s Reacher and took a guest role in Season 2 of Netflix’s Wednesday. A series with Robert Downey Jr., Singularity, was reported in development in 2024.
Is Emilio Estevez making Young Guns 3?
Yes. In March 2025, Estevez announced he is directing Young Guns 3: Dead or Alive, which he co-wrote, and starring again as Billy the Kid alongside Lou Diamond Phillips and Christian Slater, with filming in New Mexico.
What happened to Ally Sheedy?
Sheedy has taught at the City College of New York since 2021. She joined the college’s first Film Advisory Board in 2026 and continues selective acting work.
Is there a Breakfast Club sequel?
No sequel was made. John Hughes floated the idea in a 1988 phone call with Anthony Michael Hall, back when John Candy was still alive. Hughes died in 2009 without making it. Our Breakfast Club sequel page covers the full story.
For the full breakdown of who each character is and why they were in detention, start with our Breakfast Club characters guide. For the sequel that never happened, read the story behind the Breakfast Club sequel. Then meet the rest of the decade’s screen legends in our John Hughes movies guide and our 80s teen movies roundup.