On May 26, 1986, Molly Ringwald appeared on the cover of Time. She was 18 years old and wore a demure white lace top, her signature red lipstick, and a curious, innocent expression. The cover line read, “Ain’t She Sweet,” notably lacking a question mark. In the previous two years, Ringwald had starred in a trio of zeitgeist-capturing films, all directed by legendary teen-movie auteur John Hughes—Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink—that defined the innocent repression of Reagan-era adolescence. Her rise to fame was head-spinning and endowed her with a seemingly incongruent but undeniably potent double-barreled status: as the reigning archetype of America’s Sweetheart, and a serious movie star with credibility and power. Her future in mainstream Hollywood seemed limitless. Yet by the time she turned 20, Ringwald was living mostly in France, making cool art films with the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and Tonie Marshall.

Ringwald eventually returned to the United States, carving out a rich, varied, mature career without hardening against her former teen idol image. She has released a jazz album (her late father was a storied jazz pianist) and become an accomplished writer, publishing thoughtful personal essays in The New Yorker (on rethinking the gender and racial politics of Sixteen Candles and working with legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard) as well as a best-selling memoir and novel. And she’s continued to assemble an estimable body of work as an actor, most recently in Riverdale and Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer as well as a heart-wrenching cameo as a recovering addict in The Bear. In a charming, crackling chat over the holidays—on which both she and her home looked more casually radiant than anyone or anything should over Zoom—we spoke about working again with Murphy on the forthcoming Feud: Capote vs. Swans, and her desire one day (soon, please) to play the kind of deliciously immoral supervillain who, if she came across one of the characters that made Ringwald famous, might plunge a dagger straight into her (sweet) heart.

V MAGAZINE: Did you always know you wanted to be an actor?

MOLLY RINGWALD: I think I was 3 or 4 when I told my grandmother that when I grew up I was going to be a famous entertainer. That was the word that I used. [Laughs] I said I was going to be really famous and everyone was going to know me. I was just letting her in on this basic truth.

V: That’s hilarious. Like you were a young Katherine Hepburn. What appealed to you about that idea?

MR: I think there are a lot of introverts that are drawn to acting precisely because they’re introverts. On stage was the only place where I didn’t feel shy. I could do anything. I remember one of my formative roles as a child was as the dormouse in Alice in Wonderland. And there was this big moment where the dormouse freaks out and screams, “Off with her head, off with her head!” Just being able to lose my shit was so exhilarating because it was so different than the way that I was at that age. I was a very good kid. And I was very invested in being a good kid, so to be able to take on these other personas was really appealing.

V: When would you say you came into your own as a creative person? Was it when you moved to France?

MR: Yeah, I think France had a lot to do with it. That’s where I grew up and just got a little bit of clarity outside of the public eye, outside of this very intense gaze that I felt on me in America at that time. But later, when I started to give myself permission to write professionally, that was really huge. It was like, I can write and I don’t just have to be written about. I can control my own narrative to a certain extent. That felt very empowering.

V: Today, we have this image of Kardashian fame, this hyper tabloid-ed out type of celebrity. What was that period of the “intense gaze” like? Did you have paparazzi following you around?

MR: Yes, following me and my car – I mean, nothing at all to the extent of the Kardashians. I kept my private life pretty private. I didn’t go out that much, I didn’t go to clubs. I just really got very allergic to being around a lot of people. I don’t think I was meant to be a movie star. To live the life of a celebrity to me is just kind of hellish.

V: As you were transitioning out of that early celebrity period, you turned down some big roles in big films—like Pretty Woman. In our culture, there’s this sense that abdicating fame is tantamount to erasing yourself. How much self-doubt did you experience during that time?

MR: There was a lot of self-doubt, but I think that’s kind of what your twenties are about anyway. I really needed to have this sort of coming of age, because when I should have been coming of age, I was already an adult. I had skipped steps.

V: Tell me about Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, which explores Capote’s late-in-life betrayal of his closest friends, these glamorous, connected women who had inspired him when he was younger.

MR: Ryan asked me to do it. He is really great for… I don’t want to say women of a certain age, but he really celebrates women who are not 22 years old. He is interested in women who have had careers, who have been around for a while, and presenting them in a different way. My character, Joanne Carson, is the last person who stood by [Capote]. He dies in her arms. They wanted somebody who was really a contrast to all of these other women, who were very cold and shut down and basically mean girls.

V: You’re the nice girl.

MR: I’m a nice one. I’m waiting for Ryan to cast me as a total bitch, because he hasn’t done that yet.

V: I was going to say! Where is your All About Eve role?!

MR: I know! I might have to write it myself. That’s really what I’m waiting for, somebody who is complicated and a little psychopathic.

This story appears in the pages of V146: now available for purchase!

Photography Katie McCurdy

Fashion Xander Ang

Makeup Linda Gradin using Dior Beauty Forever Foundation

Hair Marco Santini (Walter Schupfer Management)

Photo assistant Rox Artridge

Location Corner Studio