The Cast of ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ Then and Now
A look at what Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jennifer Grey and more have been doing in the years since the film was released in theaters on June 11, 1986.
From Sixteen Candles to The Breakfast Club, the films of John Hughes are known for giving voice to the generation that came of age in the ’80s. They captured the social pressures and responsibilities that teens struggled against in high school, giving them permission to accept the messy reality of their lives and embrace the present. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which was released in theaters 40 years ago on June 11, 1986, was the epitome of all that. As Matthew Broderick memorably said in the title role: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
The movie follows Ferris Bueller, a kid who has his parents, and most everyone else, wrapped around his little finger. He has perfected the art of faking illness, and uses this scheme to skip school and enjoy one last day in Chicago with his girlfriend (Sloane, played by Mia Sara) and his best friend (the high-strung Cameron, played by Alan Ruck), before the guys graduate. Among their exploits, the trio go to a Cubs game, a fine dining restaurant, the Art Institute of Chicago and a downtown parade, where Ferris commandeers a float and lip syncs to “Danke Schoen” for the crowd.
And why not? When you’re about to leave for college and everything’s going to change, sometimes the best thing you can do is blow off school for a day to enjoy life — and make sure it doesn’t pass you by.
To celebrate the iconic teen movie’s 40th anniversary, THR checks in on the cast of the culture-defining hit — including Broderick, Ruck, Sara and Jennifer Grey — to see where life has taken them in the decades since its release.
A baby-faced Broderick had his breakout role a few years before Ferris Beuller, in 1983’s WarGames. In the cyber-thriller, he plays a student who, while trying to hack into a video game, accidentally breaks into a military computer and nearly starts a nuclear war. The same year, he became the youngest actor to win a Tony for best featured actor in a play for Brighton Beach Memoirs. Ferris Bueller quickly became another calling card for the young actor, as he played the ultimate slacker with a heart of gold, outwitting his high school principal (Jeffery Jones) and antagonizing his sister (Jennifer Grey) in pursuit of a good time.
In ’87, personal tragedy struck when Broderick and Grey, who were dating at the time, got in a serious car accident while vacationing in Northern Ireland. Two people in the other car were killed, while Broderick and Grey were both injured. In the years since the accident, Broderick (who was driving) has spoken of it only rarely, but has expressed remorse for what happened. The couple broke up not long afterward, and Broderick went on to marry Sarah Jessica Parker in 1997. The couple, who have three children, starred together on Broadway in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite in 2022.
Broderick continued to be an in-demand leading actor, starring opposite Helen class="xot-al" data-spotlight-artist="Helen Hunt" data-spotlight-artist-id="4584">Helen Hunt in Project X (1987), about an Air Force project involving chimps, followed by a role as an Army recruit in Biloxi Blues (1988), a part he had previously played on Broadway. He re-upped in the military for Glory (1989), playing the commander of a Black unit in the Union Army during the Civil War, with co-stars including Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. A few years later, Broderick was Emmy-nominated for a TV movie version of A Life in the Theatre (1993), in which he starred opposite Jack Lemmon.
In the Disney classic The Lion King (1994), Broderick voiced adult Simba, and in The Cable Guy (1996), he played a poor sap who gets more than he bargained for when Jim Carrey’s titular character hooks him up with free cable. In 1999’s Election, the tables were turned on an actor best known as a slacker student when he played the high school social studies teacher in the cult comedy starring Reese Witherspoon. That year, he also played the title character in a live-action feature version of Inspector Gadget.
A regular presence on the Broadway stage, Broderick won a second Tony for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1995. He would go on to star opposite Nathan Lane in The Producers in 2001, and reprised the part in the 2005 film version of the musical about two men trying to get rich by intentionally producing a Broadway flop. During this time, he also found time to play Walter, the husband of Nicole Kidman’s Joanna, in The Stepford Wives (2004). Broderick’s film résumé also includes The Tale of Desperaux (2008), Tower Heist (2011), Manchester by the Sea (2016) and Painkiller (2023). On television, he’s popped up on shows like Modern Family, 30 Rock, The Conners and, more recently, Only Murders in the Building and Elsbeth.
As the high-strung and fatalistic Cameron, who finally snaps when he realizes a pair of parking attendants took his father’s prized 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California for a joy ride, Ruck played the stressed-out yang to Ferris’ laid-back yin. The actor had already appeared in half a dozen movies and TV movies before Bueller, making his debut in Bad Boys (1983) — not the one you’re thinking about, this one centers on a reform school and stars Sean Penn. He also already knew co-star Broderick, as they performed together on Broadway in Biloxi Blues in 1985.
After the success of Ferris Bueller, Ruck starred opposite Charlie Sheen (who also had a small but memorable part in Bueller, see below) and Kerri Green in road-trip dramedy Three for the Road (1987) and appeared in Three Fugitives (1989), a comedy led by Nick Nolte and Martin Short about bank robbers on the run, among other films. He appeared as a tourist in Speed (1994), and the same year played the captain of the Enterprise-B in the feature Star Trek: Generations. That was soon followed by Twister (1996), the classic tornado-chasing disaster film in which he played Robert “Rabbit” Nurick.
Ruck’s next memorable project was Spin City, in which he played the lovably sleazy Stuart Bondek for the show’s entire run, from 1996-2002. After the sitcom wrapped, he played a neighbor of the central family in Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), a school principal in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (2008) and a ghost dad in the Ricky Gervais-starring Ghost Town (2008). During the aughts and 2010s, he also kept busy appearing on shows like NCIS, Psych, Burn Notice, Cougar Town, Boston Legal and Scrubs.
After bouncing around for a few years in this way, zeitgeist-capturing success struck again when Ruck joined HBO’s smash-hit Succession, which ran from 2018-23. He played Connor Roy, the politically inclined half-sibling who is an outsider in his own family and eventually runs for president. Ruck shared in the series’ awards riches, snagging an Emmy nomination and joining the cast in winning two SAG Awards for the ensemble.
On Broadway, Ruck replaced Broderick as Leo Bloom in The Producers in 2005 and starred as Sidney in Absurd Person Singular, which opened later that year. He met his wife, Mireille Enos, while working on the latter play, and the couple share two children. He was previously married to Claudia Stefany, with whom he also has two children.
Sara, who played Ferris’ cool and compassionate girlfriend Sloane, made her acting debut in 1983 on All My Children before landing a role in Ridley Scott’s fantasy epic Legend (1985).
After Bueller, she starred in the miniseries Queenie with Kirk Douglas and appeared in the film Apprentice to Murder (1988) as well as Shadows in the Storm (1988), Big Time (1989) and Melanie Griffith starrer A Stranger Among Us (1992), among others. Notably, in the time-travel sci-fi action movie Timecop (1994), she played star Jean-Claude Van Damme’s wife, whose murder is a pivot point in the plot.
In the horror movie The Maddening (1995), Sara played a young mother held hostage by an insane couple. She also worked on numerous TV movies and miniseries, including 1997’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and later played Harley Quinn on The WB’s Birds of Prey (2002-03). She starred with Ron Perlman in Hoodlum & Son (2003), a 1930s-set mob drama, and played an ally of the Wicked Witch of the West in Dorothy and the Witches of Oz (2012), in which an adult Dorothy realizes the popular books are based on suppressed experiences from her youth.
Sara now lives in England, where she writes poetry, and recently returned to the screen in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck (2024) after an 11-year absence.
She is married to Brian Henson, the son of Jim Henson, with whom she has a daughter. He directed her in the 2001 miniseries Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story. She was previously married to Jason Connery, Sean Connery’s son, after they co-starred with Michael Caine in the TV movie Bullet to Beijing (1995). She and Connery share a son.
By the time she played Ferris Bueller’s type-A, jealous sister, Grey had already appeared in several movies, including 1984’s Reckless, Red Dawn and The Cotton Club. But 1987, the year after Bueller came out, was when she truly made her mark as Baby in Dirty Dancing.
