6. Judd Nelson
Think of Judd Nelson and you think of the
Breakfast Club. Think harder and you think of
St. Elmo's Fire. Just two titles. But it doesn't matter. Judd was dynamite in both - especially as John Bender, the bully rocker of
The Breakfast Club. His audition wowed John Hughes and his performance in the film wowed audiences, providing depth and pathos to what could easily have been a cardboard cut-out role. He stole every scene he was in, brooding with barely concealed rage and anger, and his fist pump - forever frozen in time as the end credits roll - is seared into our memories. Unfortunately, he was out on the tiles with Emilio Estevez when a New York reporter tagged along, coined the phrase
'The Brat Pack', and ruined their lives overnight by painting them as obnoxious, ungrateful brats with too much money and too much power. After that, the Brat Pack was as welcome as Ebola at an orphanage nativity play. Judd found himself inextricably tied to other members of the Pack and lost his individuality. His reputation for being intense wasn't helping either. So he tried hard to shift the Brat Pack tag, working on quirky projects such as
Shattered If Your Kid's on Drugs, Blue City and
From the Hip. Later, he found a modicum of success opposite Brooke Shields in the sitcom
Suddenly Susan but has since, like C. Thomas Howell, has been forced to cut a career in largely forgettable TV and direct to video slush such as
The Black Hole (which isn't the cool film from 1979 but some made for the Sci-Fi channel gibberish). For me though, and countless millions around the world, he will forever remain an icon, punching the air as he tramps across a football field; the peasant who kissed the princess.