McCarthy played adrift Georgetown University grad Kevin in St. Elmo’s Fire—and then, in Pretty in Pink, rich, popular high school senior Blane, who falls for Ringwald’s outcast-because-she’s-not-rich-and-makes-her-own-clothes Andie.
After that it was onto a window dresser whose muse comes to life in Mannequin and a disaffected college student in Less Than Zero (also with Robert Downey Jr. and Pretty in Pink co-star James Spader, both considered Brat Pack-adjacent), but it’s Weekend at Bernie‘s that’s rewatched endlessly today.
McCarthy’s film highlights after the 1980s included The Joy Luck Club and Mulholland Falls, and he starred on numerous shows that only lasted one season, such Lipstick Jungle. But he also leaned into theater (he was in Long Day’s Journey Into Night when he told People that the Brat Pack wasn’t a real thing) and has become a busy director, working on Gossip Girl, Orange Is the New Black, The Blacklist, The Sinner and Good Girls.
He is also, fun fact, an award-winning travel writer—so if you see the “Andrew McCarthy” byline in The New York Times, Travel + Leisure or Bon Appetit, that’s the same guy—and he authored a YA novel, Just Fly Away.
McCarthy has a son from his first marriage to college sweetheart Carol Schneider, and a daughter with Dolores Rice, his wife since 2011.