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Ruck starred in the 1986 film with Matthew Broderick
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Alan Ruck opened up about starring in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and why he didn’t want to discuss the movie for a long time
He admitted that while he was “having trouble getting work,” he didn’t want to talk about the movie at all
The movie, which also starred Matthew Broderick and Mia Sara, turns 40 this year
Alan Ruck will happily talk about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off now, but for years the movie was a non-starter.
Ruck, 70, and Matthew Broderick both spoke to The Guardian for an article published July 20 about the 40th anniversary of the now-iconic film. The 1986 movie, written, co-produced, and directed by John Hughes, followed Broderick’s Ferris as he takes the day off from school. Ruck played Cameron Frye, Ferris’ best friend, and Mia Sara played Sloane Peterson, Ferris’ girlfriend, who both end up playing hooky with him too. The cast also included Jennifer Grey as Ferris’ sister, Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward as his parents, and Ben Stein as his economics teacher.
“There was a period where I didn’t want anything to do with the film,” Ruck admitted to The Guardian. “I was having trouble getting work and everybody kept talking about Ferris Bueller. I thought that’s as good as it’s going to get for me.”
While Ruck worked in both film and TV in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, with roles in 1987’s Three for the Road, 1994’s Star Trek Generations and the Fox series Spin City, in the 2000s, he was limited to mostly one-off TV guest star roles and small film parts. Then, in 2018, he was cast as Connor Roy in HBO’s critically acclaimed Succession; in 2023, it earned him an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series.
“As soon as I started working again, I really came to appreciate it,” Ruck said of Ferris Bueller.
Ruck also remembered how, initially, he had to fight to be cast alongside Broderick, 64, in the role.
“The casting directors didn’t want to see me because I was 28 and thought I was too old,” he said. At the time, Ruck and Broderick were starring together in the 1984 play Biloxi Blues.
“My agent said: ‘He plays opposite Broderick every night. They look the same age,’ ” he remembered.
Once he auditioned, they realized it would work, but didn’t offer him the movie right away. “Matthew’s manager kept laying the idea in John’s ear, saying: ‘Matthew would like to work with Alan.’ That went a long way to getting me the part,” he said. “Matthew and I were already friends. We didn’t have to make that up.”
Broderick told the outlet that he thought part of the movie’s success was because they’d done Biloxi Blues, a military play, right before, and had “timeless hair-dos.”
“Given the date the film was made, had we been able to, we might’ve both had crazy mullets, in which case, it would not have become a timeless classic,” he said.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off made $70 million at the box office and became an iconic teen film.
Broderick and Ruck will reunite in the upcoming movie The Best Is Yet to Come, based on a French film of the same name. Looking back at filming the new project, which doesn’t have a release date yet, Ruck told PEOPLE in March that finding his chemistry with Broderick again was simple.
“It felt like we hadn’t stopped,” he said. “It didn’t, it didn’t feel like 40 years had gone by. So it was easy, you know.”
He joked, “I think we made a pact to work together every 40 years. So, so far so good.”
Read the original article on People
