Boyfriend Material REVIEW: 'Brat: An ’80s Story' CIRCA 1988: Actress Molly Ringwald and actor Andrew McCarthy pose for the movie " Fresh Horses ", circa 1988. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) David Skinner • June 6, 2021 5:00 am SHARE Helped by luck, good writing, and a talented director, an actor can streak across the national attention span so dramatically that, for a while, they come to represent certain human types to the culture at large. Their face may even become the face of certain hard-to-define but historically important characteristics—just as Humphrey Bogart’s soft-lidded, half-smirking mug seems to personify the World War II generation’s dry wit and stoicism, or as Glenn Close’s beaked, steely-eyed visage brings into focus the dark side of female ambition in our time.