The Breakfast Club Characters: Who Was Who in Detention
Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois. Seven in the morning, one library, five kids who would not have said three words to each other in the hallway. Every one of us knew which one we were supposed to be.
The Breakfast Club opened February 15, 1985, written, produced and directed by John Hughes, and made $51.5 million on a $1 million budget. Five students, one detention, and a vice principal who assigns each of them a one-thousand-word essay about who they think they are. Here is who each of them actually was, who played them, and the thing even devoted fans tend to forget.
John Bender (Judd Nelson)
The criminal, in detention for pulling the fire alarm, and the engine of the whole movie. Bender needles Vernon until he has collected eight additional weekends of detention, deliberately gets himself caught so the other four can sneak back into the library, escapes a storage closet through the ceiling panels and falls through into the room, and eventually tells them what is waiting at home: a father who burns him with cigars. Nothing in that library moves until Bender pushes it.
What casual fans forget: he was not the first choice, and he was not even the second. Hughes narrowed Bender down to John Cusack and Judd Nelson, cast Cusack, and then swapped him out before shooting started because Cusack did not read as intimidating enough. Nicolas Cage had been considered. Alan Ruck auditioned. Nelson, born in Portland, Maine in 1959, got the part and then had the year of his life: The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire both landed in 1985. He is also in the Simple Minds video for “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” that welded the song to the movie forever, spent four seasons on Suddenly Susan, played Billy Beretti on Empire, and voiced Hot Rod in The Transformers: The Movie. In 2007 he put the trench coat back on and played Bender again, in animated form, on Family Guy.
Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald)
The princess, in detention for skipping school to go shopping. Claire is the one the movie is hardest on early and most generous with late: the popularity that turns out to be its own kind of pressure, the parents who use her against each other, the makeover she gives Allison, and the diamond earring she hands Bender on the way out. She was named Cathy in the first draft of the script.
What casual fans forget: Ringwald was not offered Claire. Hughes approached her to play Allison, and she pushed to be Claire instead, which she got only after convincing him and the studio. Robin Wright, Jodie Foster, Diane Lane and Laura Dern all auditioned for that part. Ringwald, born in Roseville, California in 1968 to a blind jazz pianist father, had already carried Sixteen Candles at sixteen and was on the cover of Time by May 1986. What is less remembered is the second act: she moved to Paris in the mid-90s and made French films, came back for a five-season, 121-episode run on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, played Archie’s mother Mary Andrews on Riverdale, turned up in The Kissing Booth movies, and played Joanne Carson in the second season of Feud in 2024. She also translates French literature into English, including Philippe Besson’s Lie with Me. The teenager on the Time cover grew up into a working writer.
Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez)
The athlete, in detention for taping a classmate’s buttocks together, which he did trying to win the approval of his teammates and his father. Andy is the one carrying a father’s voice around in his head, and he is the only one of the five whose crime hurt somebody else.
What casual fans forget: Estevez was cast as Bender first. When Hughes could not find anybody he liked for Andrew, he moved Estevez over and went back out for a Bender. Estevez, born in the Bronx in 1962, the eldest son of Martin Sheen, had already done Tex, The Outsiders and Repo Man before this, and he kept the longest movie-star run of the five: St. Elmo’s Fire, Stakeout, both Young Guns pictures, and then Gordon Bombay in three Mighty Ducks films and the Disney+ revival. He is also the reason for one of the decade’s better crossovers: he played Billy the Kid in the “Blaze of Glory” video for his friend Jon Bon Jovi, who returned the favor with a cameo in Young Guns II. And he became a real director, with Bobby, The Way and The Public to his name.
Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy)
The basket case, who was not sentenced to detention at all. She turned up because she had nothing better to do, which is the single saddest fact in the movie. Allison says almost nothing for the first half of it, lies compulsively once she starts talking, and steals and hoards small things, which she explains she is saving for the day she runs away from parents who barely notice her.
What casual fans forget: Joan Cusack was considered for Allison before Sheedy got it, and Sheedy, born in New York City in 1962, was already a published author. McGraw Hill put out her novel She Was Nice to Mice in 1975, when she was twelve. She had also already survived WarGames and Bad Boys before detention, went on to Short Circuit, and then took the sharpest turn of anyone in the cast: she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead for High Art in 1998, playing a drug-addicted photographer, a role built to demolish the girl-next-door thing. She never liked the Brat Pack tag, calling it “snotty” and “condescending and sort of dismissive in a way” back in 1986. Since 2022 she has taught in the theater department at the City College of New York.
Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall)
The brain, and the one the movie treats most carefully. Brian is in detention because a flare gun went off in his locker. He had brought it to school meaning to take his own life, after an F in shop class broke him against the academic pressure his parents were putting on him. He is also the one who writes the essay, and his voice reading it is the first and last thing you hear.
What casual fans forget: Hall was the first of the five to be cast, and his real mother and sister play Brian’s mother and sister in the film. He turned sixteen during the shoot. Hughes had spotted him two years earlier when Hall played Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation: “For [Hall] to upstage Chevy, I thought, was a remarkable accomplishment for a 13-year-old kid,” Hughes said. The year after this movie he joined Saturday Night Live at seventeen and remains the youngest cast member in that show’s history, though he was let go at the end of the season along with Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Randy Quaid, Terry Sweeney and Danitra Vance. Stanley Kubrick offered him the lead in Full Metal Jacket, and eight months of negotiation collapsed over money, so the part went to Matthew Modine. He came back as the villain in Edward Scissorhands, carried The Dead Zone for six seasons, played the reporter Mike Engel in The Dark Knight, turned up in Halloween Kills, and played Zachary Beck in the third season of Reacher in 2025. The geek outlasted the label.
Richard Vernon and Carl the janitor
The adults in the building get one of the film’s better tricks played on them. Vice Principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason) is the villain right up until the boiler room, where Carl tells him the kids have not changed, he has. Gleason, a Jersey City kid who played football at Florida State alongside Burt Reynolds and signed a professional baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians before acting, built an entire career out of being magnificently wrong in a suit: Clarence Beeks in Trading Places, two episodes of The A-Team, and Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson in Die Hard. He got to parody Vernon himself in Not Another Teen Movie, and he was there in 2006 to accept the film’s special citation at the MTV Movie Awards with his castmates. He died of pleural mesothelioma later that year, at 67. NPR’s obituary called him “a ‘principal’ screen presence.”
Carl Reed (John Kapelos) is the one adult in the film with the whole number. Kapelos came out of Second City in Chicago, where he spent four years touring and four more in the Resident Company, and he appeared in three Hughes movies: Sixteen Candles, this one, and Weird Science. Rick Moranis was originally cast as the janitor and was released by producer Ned Tanen, who thought the over-the-top Russian caricature Moranis was playing did not fit the film. Kapelos replaced him, played it straight, and got the line that turns Vernon inside out.
Remember when the argument in the middle of that library stopped being a movie and started being an accurate transcript of your own high school? Nobody had to explain the seating chart to anybody. We all knew where we sat.
Forty years later, all five in one room
On Saturday, April 12, 2025, at C2E2 in Chicago, at McCormick Place, all five sat on a stage together for the first time in forty years. Estevez had been the holdout at earlier gatherings. “I skipped all of my high school reunions,” he said. “This was something that, finally, I felt I needed to do for myself. It’s here in Chicago and it’s the 40th anniversary, and it just felt like it was time.” Ringwald: “We don’t have to use the cardboard cutout anymore. I feel really moved that we’re all together.” Sheedy told the room, “I don’t know if you can tell but we all really do love each other. It was a dream.”
The stories they told were the small ones. Hall on how he got hired: “John just called up and said, ‘I want you to come in.’ He didn’t have a script. He didn’t give me a script.” Nelson wearing the same clothes he auditioned in, right there in the finished film. Ringwald throwing out her wardrobe and going shopping in Chicago. Estevez getting his wisdom teeth pulled the night before the first read-through and fighting to stay awake through the screening that followed. Josh Horowitz moderated. The film was shot just outside the city, at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, and Chicago is exactly why Estevez finally showed.
The honest bottom line
Every high school movie made since has been trying to build this room. What holds up is not the detention or the dancing or even the essay. It is that Hughes gave all five of them the same amount of dignity, including the one you were told to hate, and then refused to fix any of them by the closing credits. They walk out still stuck in the same building on Monday. The 1985 movie that made the least effort to lie is the one still standing forty years on. That is not nostalgia. That is just the scoreboard.
FAQ
Who are the five Breakfast Club characters?
John Bender the criminal (Judd Nelson), Claire Standish the princess (Molly Ringwald), Andrew Clark the athlete (Emilio Estevez), Allison Reynolds the basket case (Ally Sheedy) and Brian Johnson the brain (Anthony Michael Hall).
Where is The Breakfast Club set?
Shermer High School in the fictional town of Shermer, Illinois, on Saturday, March 24, 1984. The film itself was shot at Maine North High School in Des Plaines, just outside Chicago.
Why is each character in detention?
Bender for pulling the fire alarm, Claire for skipping school to go shopping, Andrew for taping a classmate’s buttocks together, and Brian because a flare gun he brought to school went off in his locker. Allison was not sentenced at all. She showed up because she had nothing better to do.
Did the Breakfast Club cast ever reunite?
Yes. All five appeared together for the first time in forty years at C2E2 in Chicago on Saturday, April 12, 2025, on a 40th anniversary panel moderated by Josh Horowitz.
Who played the principal in The Breakfast Club?
Paul Gleason played Vice Principal Richard Vernon. He also played Clarence Beeks in Trading Places and Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson in Die Hard. Gleason died in 2006 at 67.
Who was almost cast in The Breakfast Club?
John Cusack was cast as Bender and replaced by Judd Nelson before shooting. Nicolas Cage was considered for the same role and Alan Ruck auditioned. Joan Cusack was considered for Allison, and Robin Wright, Jodie Foster, Diane Lane and Laura Dern auditioned for Claire. Rick Moranis was cast as the janitor and released before John Kapelos took over.
We were in high school the exact spring this opened, the whole story is here. Want the whole run of movies this one came from? Start with our guide to the John Hughes movies, then take the most famous sick day in film history with Ferris Bueller, or see who else made the decade in our 80s pop culture icons countdown.