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It’s hard to imagine Ferris Bueller’s Day Off without star Matthew Broderick, whose career fully took off after playing the titular teenage slacker – however, it turns out that director John Hughes originally had two other actors in mind for the role.
The 1986 comedy, which follows rebellious Ferris as he bunks off school with friends while avoiding his teachers, parents and sister, became one of the highest-grossing films of the year after grossing over $70m (the equivalent of £47.6m at the time).
Forty years on, star Alan Ruck – who plays Ferris’s friend Cameron in the film – has revealed that the film could have looked very different, with Hughes initially picturing two actors from The Breakfast Club in the part.
“John Hughes originally thought of Anthony Michael Hall or Emilio Estevez for Ferris, but they wanted to move on to different things, so he wisely cast Matthew,” he told The Guardian.
“We were doing this play together, Biloxi Blues. In one scene, he’s writing in his journal and we’re supposed to be asleep. One night, he nudges me. I open my eyes and he shows me his journal. It said: ‘They offered me Ferris Bueller.’”
Hall and Estevez had both worked with Hughes on 1985 hit The Breakfast Club, while Hall had also starred in the director’s comedies Sixteen Candles and Weird Science. They were members of the “Brat Pack”, a nickname given to the set of actors who commonly starred in high school comedies at the time.
Broderick added that he received offers for a lot of “young guy” roles after appearing in films WarGames and Ladyhawke – and was “concerned at first” by Ferris talking to the camera throughout the film.
“I’d done that in two plays and didn’t want to it to seem like that’s all I could do,” he said. “Meanwhile, my agent said: ‘You’ve been asked to do a John Hughes movie. You’re doing it.’ I didn’t know much about John at the time, but I kept hearing him being referred to as the ‘Spielberg of teen films’.”
As for Ruck, he almost missed out on the role of Cameron after casting directors thought he was too old for the role at the age of 28. Thankfully, they changed their minds after he auditioned, but it took a few attempts by Broderick’s agent to convince Hughes.
“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. Matthew and I were already friends. We didn’t have to make that up.”
Ruck also revealed that there was a period of time when he “didn’t want anything to do with the film” after struggling to find work. “Everybody kept talking about Ferris Bueller,” he said. “I thought that’s as good as it’s going to get for me. As soon as I started working again, I really came to appreciate it.”
Ruck, now 70, later appeared in 1994 action thriller Speed, 1996’s Twister and 2003 comedy Cheaper by the Dozen, among other small film and TV roles, before landing the role of Connor Roy in the award-winning series Succession. He received both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for its final series.
Since Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Broderick has enjoyed a successful career – starring in The Producers, The Lion King, Inspector Gadget, Election and a number of stage roles, winning Tony Awards for performances in Brighton Beach Memoirs and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Earlier this year, Mia Sara – who stars as Sloan Peterson in the film – said that making the film was “not that good an experience” for her, revealing that she did not get along with director Hughes.
“He wanted us all to hang out together and to introduce us to the French New Wave films,” she said. “But the others were seasoned actors, and I was a snotty New York kid and had seen all those movies, so he was frustrated in that desire. I didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with other people's egos, or my own.”
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