Brat Pack actors turn authors

Andrew McCarthy, who starred in Pretty in Pink, has just come out with his book, The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down.

Andrew McCarthy says he has the 'two best jobs in the world', as an actor and as a travel writer. AP
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John Hughes should have called it The Breakfast Book Club.

Molly Ringwald, who starred in Hughes' 1985 hit The Breakfast Club, last month published her first fiction novel, When it Happens to You. Her Pretty in Pink co-star, Andrew McCarthy, has just come out with The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down.

"I answer all the questions in my life by travelling," said McCarthy, 49, now a travel writer for major magazines. "It started because I met the editor at National Geographic Traveler and I convinced him after much cajoling to let me write a piece for them. Eventually I said, 'Let me write it, if it doesn't work, you don't pay me.' So I did a piece for him and that worked out. Then I started writing for The Atlantic, The Times and numerous things and nobody really put together that it was the actor Andrew McCarthy writing."

Aside from Ringwald and McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, who appears in The Breakfast Club, co-authored Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son with his father, Martin Sheen, published last summer. And Ally Sheedy, also a star in The Breakfast Club, has been in recent years publishing children's books (She Was Nice to Mice) and poetry (Yesterday I Saw the Sun).