Ally Sheedy

In The Breakfast Club (1985), sharing a room looks like something that requires effort. Ally Sheedy’s Allison Reynolds helps prevent John Hughes’ detention group from becoming comfortable together too quickly. We were glad of her awkwardness: it stops the group seeming ready to be friends before anyone has earned it. She gives us a reason to stay interested in a character who begins as a school type.

WarGames (1983) gives her a different job, and it is the stronger of the two films. She plays Jennifer opposite Matthew Broderick’s David in John Badham’s computer thriller, and their ease together is a substantial part of its appeal. Broderick keeps David’s cleverness recognisably childish, with judgement that cannot be relied upon. Sheedy makes spending time with him seem appealing all the same, which gives the teenage scenes a reason to exist beyond getting the plot moving.

The limits are clearer in Hughes’ film. Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall do more to earn our affection, while Sheedy’s contribution is to keep the company unsettled. The performances can be broad, and the complaints about parents receive too little challenge; credible discomfort cannot fix that. Still, the pupils’ constant checking of where they stand among their classmates makes sense, and Sheedy makes that uncertainty believable.

St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) and Short Circuit (1986) belong to the period that made her prominent, but light and comic parts also narrowed what she was being asked to do. After a quieter stretch in the late 1980s and early 1990s, High Art (1998) brought her back to attention as photographer Lucy Berliner. That independent drama offered the more demanding adult work that the earlier casting had too often withheld. Start with WarGames to see how much her ease with Broderick does for a thriller. Leave The Breakfast Club for an evening when Hughes’ broad school types will not put you off.