These Brat Packers are all grown up — and thriving! Nearly 40 years after St. Elmo's Fire introduced moviegoers to Demi Moore and Andrew McCarthy (among others), the two costars reunited this past weekend. Andrew, 60, captured the touching moment on his Instagram account and included a startling throwback, too.
"So great to see (for the first time in years and years) my St. Elmo's Fire co-star, the wondrous Demi Moore, and catch up for my Brat Pack documentary," the '80s heartthrob wrote. In the lower half of the two-photo split, modern-day Andrew grins as he stands alongside Demi, 60, who smiles broadly as she holds her dachshund. Both are dressed casually and appear to be at a private residence, mostly likely in the L.A. area where Demi calls home.
In the top half of the post, we see baby-faced Demi and Andrew as they were in the classic 1985 drama. Demi, with dirty blonde hair teased up in an '80s bouffant, wears a pink strapless dress and plenty of bracelets and holds a cigarette as she chats with a dreamy Andrew — also smoking (it was the '80s!) and sporting a very au courant feathered hairdo and blazer as he gazes at her longingly.
© Archive PhotosOne of a handful of seminal so-called Brat Pack films, St. Elmo's Fire also starred Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy, Mare Winningham, Judd Nelson, and Andie MacDowell as a group of recent Georgetown University graduates struggling to adjust to post-college adulthood. Demi played Jules, a very glamorous, very troubled banker/party girl, while Andrew played Kevin, a moody young journalist. It was Andrew's very first film in Hollywood, and he went on to star in classics like Pretty in Pink (opposite Brat Pack queen Molly Ringwald), Mannequin, Less Than Zero, and Weekend at Bernie's. Demi, meanwhile, was familiar to soap fans as a star of General Hospital, though this was one of her earlier movie breakouts. After buzzy turns in About Last Night, One Crazy Summer and The Seventh Sign, she became a massive blockbuster star in '90s smashes like Ghost, A Few Good Men, and Indecent Proposal.
© Vinnie ZuffanteDemi dated her St. Elmo's Fire costar Emilio shortly after meeting on-set. The couple were together for three years, and became engaged until Demi apparently called off the wedding.
“Emilio and I were at two different junctures in our internal lives,” she told Vanity Fair in 1991. “Emilio’s focus was more work-oriented. There were certain things that he, at his age, wasn’t interested in.”
“Ending it was not saying ‘You’re a real a**hole, that’s why I’m leaving.’ It was ‘Wow, I really love you so much, but it’s not right, is it?” Moore continued. “It was the most mature step I could’ve made. But I couldn’t love him and be that close anymore.”
© Silver Screen CollectionWhile not much is yet known about Andrew's Brat Pack documentary, the actor wrote about the cultural phenomenon and his part in it in his 2021 memoir Brat: An '80s Story. In addition to St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty In Pink, the most beloved flicks associated with that group of young actors (given that moniker in a New York magazine article) included Sixteen Candles and Breakfast Club — both of them quintessential, hugely influential takes on American high school life in the 80s, both directed by Pink's helmer John Hughes.
"And you know what I represent now, I'm like an avatar to that generation's youth," he told NPR in a 2021 interview. They're not only looking back at the movies, they're looking back at themselves when they were young, and at that moment when they were 20, whenever, and the world, they were just bursting out into the world when their life is an empty canvas to be painted on."
© FOXAndrew, who struggled with alcohol abuse during his heyday, has found acceptance and joy in being part of that moment in time. "I've grown to find that very satisfying, whereas I ran from that for so long. But I've come to really think of that as a gift. And that said, the emotions in that are true in those movies — I think they're pretty truthful. However dated they may be as movies, the emotions underneath are timeless in that way. And so kids can relate to that. Maybe not the hair, but, you know, the emotions."
