Known for: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sundance Film Festival
Net worth: $170 million
As a kid growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, I distinctly recall a crowd-favorite potluck dessert called, “The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford.” He was more than a household name. He was a household heartthrob.
Robert Redford began acting on Broadway and television, most notably in The Twilight Zone in 1962 and on Broadway in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park . Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made him a verifiable movie star. He followed it up in 1972 with Jeremiah Jones and in 1973 with two number one box office hits, The Way We Were and The Sting , making him No. 1 at the box office for three consecutive years. Capitalizing on his success, he championed environmental causes and founded the Sundance Institute for aspiring filmmakers. Today, the festival of the same name is one of the world’s most prominent film festivals. Politically, Redford actively supports environmentalism, Native American rights, and LGBT rights. He’s a trustee of The National Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group based in N.Y.C. He also backs the arts and supports various political causes and campaigns.
Judd Nelson
Known for: The Breakfast Club
Net worth: $8 million
Inveterate “Brat Packer” Judd Nelson debuted his bad-boy persona on The Breakfast Club. It came to life in 1985, when “Brat Pack” architect John Hughes’ totally ’80s flick hit the big screen rousing teen infatuation everywhere. The obsession mounted as another Hughes movie called, St. Elmo’s Fire , starring Nelson alongside Rob Lowe, Demi Moore and Andrew McCarthy opened. Sixteen Candles kicked off the frenzy over Hughes’ trademark style a year previous.
Judd Nelson was raised in middle-class, Portland, Maine. He studied philosophy at the university, but after he graduated he took off to New York City for an acting career. Hitting it big was not what he expected. Reflecting back he is famously known to have said, “My Brat Pack buddies and I didn’t exactly handle celebrity very well. Success at an early age is far more difficult to handle than failure.”
Robert Downey Jr.
Known for: Less Than Zero
Net worth: $300 million
Child actor, Robert Downey, Jr. appeared in his first movie at age 5. On the rise with our pack of 1980s teen icons, he starred in John Hughes’ classic sci-fi comedy Weird Science. Downey peaked in the quintessential Gen X role from Less Than Zero (1987), the Eighties-era opus.
In Chaplin , a maturing Downey earned an Oscar nomination and won the BAFTA for Best Actor. Drug abuse problems derailed his career to a degree, but his comebacks, most significantly with Marvel, have erased any losses. He’s one of the highest-grossing actors in the world. Robert Downey, Jr., was born in Manhattan to a filmmaker father and an actress mother. Drugs and alcohol were everywhere growing up. His dad let him smoke pot at six. He played in amazing 1990s flicks like Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson, and Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino.
Pam Grier
Known for: Jackie Brown and Coffy
Net worth: $10 million
Pam Grier was the queen of the early 1970s Blaxploitation movies. Women in Cages and The Big Dollhouse featured her lively character roles, making her the first African American to play an action hero. In Coffy , Grier plays a vigilante taking out justice on a coke dealer for addicting her sister. Black Mama, White Mama is another Blaxploitation film of Grier’s. Like a 1970s version of Orange Is the New Black , this movie takes place at a women’s prison on a fictional tropical island. Though Blaxploitation sounds bad, it had elements of black power and women’s power. The film style went out with the 1970s.
Miami Vice was a crazy-popular hit TV series that ran during the heart of the Eighties, from 1985 to 1989. Pam Grier became a regular on the show. It’s difficult to explain its mass appeal like it would be difficult to explain the mass appeal of PewDiePie in 30 years. Miami Vice featured Don Johnson, a hunk of a private detective with slicked-back hair in a slick white-white suit wearing designer shades and a Rolex watch—totally ’80s—and, at his fingertips, an ever-ready, even more slick, gleaming chrome handgun. Also in the 1980s, Grier played the evil Dust Witch in Ray Bradbury’s story, Something Wicked This Way Comes, a 1983 Disney production. In the 1990s, she was Jackie Brown. Quentin Tarantino’s crime-thriller was created as a direct nod to Blaxploitation films. Award nominations and an NAACP Image Award revived her career. Factoid: Pam Grier was the first black woman to appear on the cover of Ms. Magazine, 1975.
Drew Barrymore
Known for: E.T.
Net worth: $125 million
Drew Barrymore was born into Hollywood stardom. Almost every member of her family has showbiz creds. Her godfather, for example, is none other than Steven Speilberg. He’s also director E.T. , but no one could have predicted the rebellious ’80s teen icon she would become. She was so damn cool that Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love asked her to be the godmother of their baby daughter, Frances Bean Cobain. And she’s still wildly popular, agelessly appealing to each new generation.
Despite being born to Hollywood royalty, no one could have predicted she would star in the highest-grossing film of the 1980s. Fame doesn’t come without its problems. Childhood actors are doubly cursed. For Drew Barrymore, superstardom landed her in drug and alcohol rehab by age 13. She was nine the first time she got drunk, at Rob Lowe’s birthday party, incidentally. Shortly thereafter, she was a regular at the club scene. (The hedonistic Eighties were kind of a crazy decade). She’s lucky she survived to adulthood. The fact that she’s been one of the most prolific and continuously working stars in the business, is another blessing. Drew has a philanthropic heart and has supported a wide variety of charitable organizations. Fighting hunger is one. After being named Ambassador Against Hunger for the U.N. World Food Programme, Barrymore donated $1 million to the cause.