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Molly Ringwald was left "troubled" after recently watching her hit 1980s movie The Breakfast Club.

In an article for The New Yorker, the now 50-year-old actress "reevaluated" the film after her 10-year-old daughter asked to watch it.

Directed by John Hughes, the 1985 classic tells the story of five teenagers forced to spend Saturday in detention together.

Highlighting the character of John Bender, played by Judd Nelson, Ringwald was uncomfortable at his behaviour in the movie, especially after the recent #MeToo movement.

"I worried she would find aspects of it troubling. But I hadn't anticipated that it would ultimately be most troubling to me," she wrote.

"At one point in the film the bad-boy character, John Bender, ducks under the table where my character, Claire, is sitting, to hide from a teacher," Ringwald added. "While there, he takes the opportunity to peek under Claire's skirt and, though the audience doesn't see, it is implied that he touches her inappropriately.

"Bender sexually harasses Claire throughout the film. When he's not sexualising her, he takes out his rage on her with vicious contempt, calling her 'pathetic'", she wrote.

She also highlighted issues with her 1984 movie Sixteen Candles, in particular a scene in which a boy named Jake gives his extremely drunk girlfriend to another man in exchange for underwear belonging to Ringwald's character.

"The Geek takes Polaroids with Caroline to have proof of his conquest; when she wakes up in the morning with someone she doesn't know, he asks her if she 'enjoyed it.' Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, 'You know, I have this weird feeling I did.' She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn't.

"…She was basically traded for a pair of underwear," she wrote. "Ah, John Hughes."

Hughes died in 2009 at the age of 59.