When Andrew McCarthy was a teen performing pupil, at New York University, one among his lecturers advised him, “If you keep smiling like that, you’re going to charm us all, and it will be your downfall.” This was at the daybreak of the nineteen-eighties, a decade that McCarthy stamped along with his genial display screen picture in motion pictures corresponding to “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Less Than Zero,” and “Weekend at Bernie’s.” He was typically forged as the delicate heartthrob subsequent to some cooler, bigger-haired man performed by Rob Lowe, James Spader, or Robert Downey, Jr. In “St. Elmo’s Fire” (1985), a few circle of twentysomething pals, he was a jaded newspaper reporter who pined for Ally Sheedy. In “Pretty in Pink” (1986), written and co-produced by John Hughes, he was a wealthy child who was pined for by Molly Ringwald. Both have been a part of a wave of ensemble movies about the longings of younger adults, which launched a era of actors who got here to be referred to as the Brat Pack, a time period that has develop into synonymous with eighties nostalgia.

But it didn’t begin out that method. The phrase was coined in a damning New York cover article, which adopted McCarthy’s male co-stars from “St. Elmo’s Fire” on an evening out in Los Angeles and portrayed them as entitled fame seekers. McCarthy spent years attempting to distance himself from the Brat Pack, even after his leading-man days have been over. He continued to behave, whereas discovering second and third careers as a journey author and a tv director, with credit together with “Orange Is the New Black.” He has written two books, however it took him till his third to revisit the decade that outlined him, and that he helped to outline. In “Brat: An ’80s Story,” which comes out this week, he remembers his entry into performing and his speedy rise, the alcohol downside that almost derailed his life, and coming to phrases with the Brat Pack label. When we spoke, by Zoom, he was at his house in upstate New York, the place he’s spent a lot of the pandemic. He’s additionally been directing episodes of the Awkwafina sitcom “Nora from Queens” and the crime drama “The Blacklist,” starring his “Pretty in Pink” castmate James Spader. Our dialog has been edited and condensed for readability.

You wrote a journey memoir and a young-adult novel earlier than writing your Brat Pack e book. Were you placing it off?

People have requested me over the years, “Do you want to write a Brat Pack book?” My reply was all the time a really fast no. Then, a couple of years in the past, [the Simon & Schuster publisher] Jonathan Karp contacted me, and I went, “Huh. . .” I began writing it by myself, with out telling him, to see if I had something to say. The first e book that I wrote was a journey e book, however it was actually about coming to phrases with getting married: desirous to be alone and desirous to be intimate with anyone, and the way can we reconcile these issues? I realized rather a lot about my very own habits of avoidance in that. I’d actively prevented the Brat Pack for a very long time, and I needed to see what I might study from it.

What did you study?

Well, I had some pals learn a primary draft, and one among them stated, “You know what the name of this book is? ‘Brat.’ ” I stated, “This book will never be called ‘Brat.’ ” And in that second I noticed, I assume I haven’t executed my work, as a result of that is what the e book is about. I lived along with his very clever word for a number of months, with out touching something. And then I went again and tried to reconcile how [the Brat Pack label] is pejorative on one hand and a blessing on the different. It’s bizarre—no matter you have been doing at twenty-two, would you need that to be your legacy? It will probably be mine, to a era of individuals. I’m an avatar of their youth, and, in a method, that’s a ravishing factor. It’s about folks taking a look at their youth, when their complete life was a clean canvas—that pleasure and that terror. And we have been the people who that was projected on.

Have you felt a disconnect between what these motion pictures meant to you and what they meant to the public?

I definitely did for years. I by no means understood the enchantment of “Pretty in Pink.” I believed it was a foolish film a few lady making a gown and desirous to go to a dance. But John Hughes’s motion pictures checked out younger folks’s struggles as legitimate and honorable and to not be dismissed by older people. I have a look at my nineteen-year-old son, and he’s in love for the first time, and nobody has ever been in love earlier than, in accordance with him. We might imagine the occasions are trivial as adults, however the feelings are precisely the similar, besides totally infected. So what higher second in life to honor? And teen motion pictures hadn’t essentially executed that earlier than.

It will need to have been unusual to be so many individuals’s crush, throughout adolescence particularly, when these emotions are extraordinarily highly effective.

Well, it’s not like I’m Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt.

No, you have been the extra accessible good man, so folks in all probability felt much more intimacy.

I all the time say fame modifications you on a mobile degree. All these self-centered, grandiose ideas we’ve as kids are rewarded. That isn’t wholesome for anybody. Was it bizarre? It was my life. I imply, it was bizarre going from being invisible to the reverse intercourse to all of the sudden being sprinkled with catnip. I’m not the most outgoing individual, so it’s made sure issues simpler. On the different hand, it exacerbated that feeling of distinction.

I think about that your emotions about the time period Brat Pack have developed over the years.

For positive. I went again and checked out the article once more for the first time in thirty-odd years, and it was as incendiary as I remembered. It was a fairly scathing indictment. I believe my elbow is on the cowl. When I first appeared, I went, Oh, man, they lower me out! Then I learn the article and went, Oh, thank God they lower me out!

It was your three male co-stars from “St. Elmo’s Fire,” Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Judd Nelson, out at the Hard Rock Café in Hollywood. Why weren’t you invited?

I used to be again house in New York, they usually all lived in L.A. I’ve all the time been a barely solitary individual. I preferred the guys simply wonderful after we have been working collectively. It was after we’d completed the movie, so we weren’t nonetheless hanging out.

The solely point out of you in the article is that this line: “And of Andrew McCarthy, one of the New York-based actors in St. Elmo’s Fire, a co-star says, ‘He plays all his roles with too much of the same intensity. I don’t think he’ll make it.’ ” Did you ever work out who stated this?

I’ve spent about zero time attempting to determine that out. I used to be harm that somebody had stated it, however it’s simply name-calling. I do keep in mind going, Wow, that’s a imply factor to say.

Do you could have a guess? There are solely three prospects.

Your guess could be nearly as good as mine.

You by no means requested Rob Lowe, “Are you the one who said I was intense?”

No. It didn’t happen to me. I believe I used to be in remedy by then and knew sufficient to simply let it go.

You write in the e book that the Brat Pack “never really existed at all.” What do you imply by that?

It didn’t exist on a literal degree, however it existed vastly in the ether. One of the ironies is that the minute that moniker was levelled, no person needed to be in one thing that may very well be accused of being a “Brat Pack project,” so all of the sudden these ensemble motion pictures [disappeared]. That wasn’t the solely motive, however that was part of it. I imply, I’ve by no means even met a few of my Brat Pack brethren.

Which ones?

I don’t know—who’s supposedly in the Brat Pack? Charlie Sheen, Anthony Michael Hall.

You’ve by no means met Anthony Michael Hall?

No.

How is that even potential?

I assume I function in a special world. I all the time lived in New York, and I didn’t significantly hang around with actors. I do a job for eight weeks with anyone, and life strikes on.

It seems like a nightmare, actually. Here are these three guys out on the city, performing like jerks, and also you’re not even there—you really get dissed by one among them—and but you develop into related to this group for the remainder of your life.