25 fun facts you didn’t know about your favorite teen movies

Sixteen Candles – The unknown teen star that inspired the entire movie

You had to expect John Hughes’ name to come up quite a few times on this list. He was the king of the coming-of-age teen movie genre, after all. He made stars out of actors like Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, and they actually had more of an influence on him than you probably knew.

Sixteen Candles is about Samantha (Ringwald) and her disastrous sixteenth birthday. Her older sister is getting married, and with all the excitement and stress, her entire family forgets her birthday. Things just keep getting worse from there.

When casting for Sixteen Candles, John Hughes chose Molly Ringwald to play Samantha based on her headshot. He was so inspired by her appearance, that he hung her headshot up over his desk while he wrote the film. It took him only one weekend, and he wrote it specifically with Ringwald in mind.

Ringwald worked with Hughes several other times over the years (as is clear by this list), but she has said that Sixteen Candles was the most fun she had out of any of their other projects.

This wasn’t the only character Hughes wrote with one of his stars in mind. After working with Anthony Michael Hall in National Lampoon’s Vacation, Hughes wrote the role of the nerd Ted Farmer especially for him.

Seems like it really paid to get close to John Hughes! You’ll see later on in this list that he often developed his projects specifically for his favorite stars, especially Ringwald. But sometimes, if it didn’t go his way, those relationships were permanently terminated.