Kriti Mehrotra
While it’s true Andrew McCarthy has made significant contributions to the world of entertainment as an actor, travel writer, and director, many only know him as a member of the Brat Pack. However, as explored in Hulu’s ‘Brats,’ it turns out he never liked this 1980s label because he felt as if its origin point was primarily to diminish his career instead of just being a play on words. This actually holds true for most of his fellow core members too, but they are all indeed much more than mere performers who frequently appeared together in coming-of-age films following the time of Old/New Hollywood.
Andrew McCarthy Became Interested in Entertainment Early On
Although Andrew was born on November 29, 1962, to a newspaper employee and an investment/stock market professional as the third of four boys, he ultimately found his calling in the arts. The New Jersey native reportedly attended Bernards High School as well as the preparatory Pingry Academy during his teenage years, and it was at the latter that he landed his first acting role in the stage musical ‘Oliver!’ That’s when he fell utterly in love with this craft, resulting in him enrolling at New York University for the same — but alas, he was expelled in two years since he never really attended classes.
Nevertheless, Andrew managed to make his professional debut in 1983 with the comedy-drama’ Class,’ just to then go on to feature in ‘The Beniker Gang’ (1984) and ‘Heaven Help Us’ (1985). It was then that he was dubbed a member of the Brad Pack by journalist David “Dave” Blum” in a New York Magazine profile of fellow then-rising star Emilio Estevez, and the global media caught on. He did subsequently do some iconic movies like ‘St. Elmo’s Fire,’ ‘Pretty in Pink,’ ‘Mannequin,’ ‘Less Than Zero,’ plus ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’ among others, but the label clouded his success internally.
Andrew McCarthy’s Opinion on the Brad Pack
Andrew didn’t speak on the Brad Pack openly for three decades, but once he did, he indicated his belief that the term spread because the shift from adult films doing incredibly well to teenage stories doing even better was so quick no one could grasp it. “The old guard were like, ‘Wait a minute, who are these young punks coming along?!,'” he recently told People in an exclusive interview before adding, “It did have personal ramifications. ‘Were we brats?’ We were certainly privileged. But there wasn’t anything great about us. We were just in the right place at the right time and represented that seismic change in pop culture. You’re easy prey when you’re exposed in that way.”
Andrew further expressed that this phrase simply made him feel “unseen. It felt like I lost control of the narrative of my career. Who wants to be stigmatized and branded and labeled?” After all, there was this underlying connotation that the young group comprised merely friends who often hung out casually or partied without taking their platform and profession seriously, even though it was not at all the case. Therefore, many decided they didn’t want to work together again — “We all scattered for the hills,” the actor said. “We didn’t want to be associated with it. It had a long shadow…”
However, now that almost three decades have passed, Andrew has learned to look back on his career as an actor as well as at this term through a much different perspective — with affection. That’s because the movies he did during this time were truly one of a kind (some are now cult classics), plus it all brought him closer to other artists his age, even if he didn’t see it back then. He did have to do a lot of internal work to reach this point though — to really understand why Brat Pack affected him so much in the first place — driving him to write a memoir on the same: ‘Brat: The 80s Story.’ This book serves as the inspiration behind the ‘Brats’ documentary.
Andrew McCarthy is Now a Writer and Director
While Andrew honestly hasn’t given up acting in any way, shape, or form, his primary profession for more than the past 15 years or so does seem to have been as a proud writer and director. In fact, from Broadway shows to films like ‘Main Street’ plus ‘Finding Julia’ to shows such as ‘Law & Order,’ ‘E-Ring,’ ‘Gossip Girl,’ ‘White Collar,’ ‘Good Girls,’ and ‘The Resident’ he has done it all. Nonetheless, today, he is better known in the industry for his work as a director on 15 episodes of ‘Orange is the New Black,’ 22 of ‘The Blacklist,’ 5 of ‘Condor,’ 2 of ‘The Sinner,’ and many more, all the while also writing.
Andrew reportedly began travel writing as a passion in the 2000s, only to soon find himself doing freelance work for magazines like Afar and then having his tales printed by other publications too. These include Bon Appetit, Men’s Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Time Magazine, as well as Wall Street Journal to name a few, and he has also served as an editor-at-large at National Geographic Traveler. As if all this wasn’t enough, he even published a travel memoir titled ‘The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down’ in 2012, a year after he married Irish writer-director Dolores Rice.
Andrew and Dolores actually share two adorable children as of writing — Willow and Rowan — yet the former also has a son named Sam with his first wife Carol Schneider (1999-2005). This is imperative to note because this 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year’s most recent work involves his eldest child — following his debut young adult novel ‘Just Fly Away’ in 2017 plus his memoir ‘Brat: An ’80s Story’ in 2021, he published ‘Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain’ in 2023. As the title suggests, this book is the career-long entertainer’s account of walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain as just a dedicated, proud family man with his son Sam during the summer of 2021.
It’s unclear whether ‘Brats’ director Andrew has any other projects immediately lined up for him except a production called ‘Fate,’ but whatever the case may be, we wish him all the very best in both his personal as well as professional endeavors.
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