Matthew Broderick
Matthew Broderick was at the same time charming, if goofy, every-teen, and a younger member of the John Hughes Brat Pack. Although he did not appear in as many Hughes movies as some of his peers - Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy - he went on to have a far lengthier and more illustrious career on screen than the majority of the actors he was cast alongside in the late nineteen eighties. The genius of Broderick's performance is his complete and absolute understanding of the fourth wall and his ability to make each audience member feel like he is watching events unfold along with them.
Although he had been very successful as a Broadway actor at a very young age (he is still the youngest ever winner of a TONY Award) Broderick's breakout movie role was in War Games in 1983, in which he played the role of a computer hacker at a time when everyone in the world was obsessed with computers, and also quite convinced that they were the tool with which teens were going to take over the world. He went from hacker to slacker when John Hughes saw his performance in Ladyhawke and knew he would be perfect for the charming high school senior Ferris Bueller.
Despite a long and successful stage and screen career, Ferris Bueller is the role that Broderick is still know best for. He has since won several Tony awards and nominations, winning for his performance in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and garnering a nomination for his role in the stage version of The Producers.
Broderick has himself commented that although he considers himself a stage actor who has dabbled in movies, the majority of people find his name synonymous with the perennial, and endearing, high school truant Ferris Bueller.
Jennifer Grey
Ask anyone to name a Jennifer Grey film and you will most likely get the same answer from them all; Dirty Dancing. However, the year before her break-out role in one of the classic movies of her generation, Grey was set to become a member of the John Hughes Brat Pack when she played Ferris Bueller's little sister Jeanie. Grey gives a very endearing performance as the frustrated younger sibling who sees her brother constantly get away with stunts and pranks that she knows perfectly well she herself would never get away with in a million years. For much of the movie we see her as a resentful and understandably jealous sister, but at the end of the film even she has to admit that getting a victory over Mr Rooney is something to be admired. Grey is marvelous at showing the audience the warring emotions inside her as she comes to grudgingly respect the brother she has consistently resented for many years.
After the role of Jeanie Bueller, Grey went on to co-star with Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing earning a Golden Globe nomination, and a fan base of teen girls across the globe. She revisited her dancing success in 2010 when she won the Mirror Ball Trophy on season eleven of ABC's Dancing With The Stars.
Mia Sara
Widely recognized as one of the most beautiful actresses of her generation, Mia Sara has since retired from acting, but is still a fan favorite among 1980s high schoolers for her performance as the good girl led astray Sloane Peterson in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Hughes cast her after seeing her captivating performance in the 1985 fairytale movie Legend. Despite working consistently, she did not catapult to superstardom after playing the role of Sloane and it was almost a decade before her next big breakthrough, playing opposite Jean-Claude van Damme - aka The Muscles from Brussels - in the 1994 movie Timecop, for which she received the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Nowadays, Sara does not act at all, and is married to Brian Henson, oldest son of Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets.
Alan Ruck
For an actor who is not necessarily a household name, Ruck has produced a body of work that makes one wonder why exactly he isn't one. After a breakthrough performance as the gloomy poster child for hypochondria in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ruck went on to roles in Three Fugitives, Young Guns II and the 1994 blockbuster Speed. He enjoyed small screen success also, playing power-mad sleazeball Stuart Bondek on the hit comedy series Spin City. Consistently working since the nineteen eighties - no mean feat for an actor - Frye's most recent hit was in the made-for-television adaptation of The Exorcist opposite Thelma and Louise star Geena Davis.
Jeffrey Duncan Jones
Jeffrey Duncan Jones is best known as a character actor, which made him the perfect choice to play tired and bloody-minded school principal Edward R. Rooney. After all, it takes a certain kind of ability to play the role of a grown man who allows himself to be baited by an over-confident high school senior without the entire cinema audience hating him; Rooney manages this and we see him as a comic character rather than a vindictive one. He is also an exceptional physical actor and is able to create comedy in an exaggerated form of slapstick that is amusing rather than far-fetched.
After playing the role of Mr Rooney, Jones nabbed the role of Charles Deetz in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, cementing himself not just as a character actor but a cult favorite as well; he was also a regular on Deadwood for two seasons, for which he was nominated for a Screen Actors' Guild Award. He received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in the movie Amadeus.
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen made an awful lot of movies in a very short space of time, and it was therefore not unusual to see him headlining, or carrying, a movie one week, only to glimpse him in a supporting, niche role the next. With what must now be seen as glaring irony as it pertains to his personal life, Sheen plays a teen tearaway come drug dealer who manages to lead Jeanie Bueller astray in the space of minutes when they run into each other at booking at the local police station.
At the time of Ferris Bueller's Day Off's release, Sheen was also all over theaters for his incredible performance in Oliver Stone's Platoon, followed by Wall Street opposite Michael Douglas who played the cut-throat financier Gordon Geko. Sheen was one of the "it" actors of his day and was the second of the actors in this movie to go on to star in Spin City, replacing Michael J. Fox and winning a Golden Globe award for his performance. Largely due to his performances in Two And A Half Men Sheen was television's highest paid actor in 2010 and was definitely "winning" professionally even when reports of a personal life spinning out of control were a daily occurrence. His contract with Two and a Half Men was terminated in 2011
