Andrew McCarthy

The 'Brat Pack' label followed him for four decades despite the fact he wasn't in the room the night New York magazine coined it. The article mentioned him once, in absentia, while Emilio Estevez was actually at the dinner. The films were real: St. Elmo's Fire, Pretty in Pink, Less Than Zero, Mannequin. Nobody asked him. He kept landing teenage-misfit roles in the mid-1980s because he had a particular romantic brooding that casting directors couldn't resist, and spent most of that decade deeply uncomfortable with the fame that came attached.

Two decades after Weekend at Bernie's, he'd quietly become one of the more decorated travel writers in American journalism. Editor-at-large at National Geographic Traveler for over a dozen years, six Lowell Thomas Awards, Travel Journalist of the Year from the Society of American Travel Writers. Nearly a hundred hours of TV directing credits, too, including The Blacklist and Orange Is the New Black. His 2024 documentary BRATS premiered at Tribeca before landing on Hulu, relitigating the mythology he'd been hauling around since 1985, this time on his own terms.

He started drinking at twelve, which is young enough to suggest it wasn't recreational. He enrolled at NYU, got expelled, and decided acting was the better bet. None of it came out publicly during his 1980s peak. He entered detox in 1992 and has been sober since. His memoir Brat: An '80s Story (2021) describes finding fame uncomfortable in a way that felt almost allergic. For someone who spent years playing likable romantic leads, the public's appetite for him was never quite matched by his own.