Ally Sheedy: LGBTQ+ Pride Ally

Played lesbian photographer on film, Hedwig on stage, and supportive mom to a 30-year-old transman

Ally Sheedy in ‘The Breakfast Club’ (1985). Studio publicity still posted to IMDB.

Ally Sheedy’s character Allison in The Breakfast Club (1985), the weird goth girl no one understood, was always my favorite among the five high school archetypes in John Hughes’s film about a Saturday detention.

I thought about both the character and actress after learning of the new Hulu documentary Brats made by Andrew McCarthy, one of the crop of 20-something “Brat Packers”who dominated 1980s Hollywood. The actress (born Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy) felt the Brat Pack label hampered her career.

Ally Sheedy (second from left)

Once Sheedy hit her thirties, big-studio tinseltown sexism also shut out talented peers the likes of Debra Winger and Rosanna Arquette (neither who were in the Brat Pack), captured perfectly in Arquette’s 2002 documentary Searching for Debra Winger.

Was Allison only looking for attention?

While Sheedy’s acting roles have been sporadic in recent years (i.e., Looking for Debra Winger), she plays mom to a 20-something woman with a drinking problem…