Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight, is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.
While Joan Vassos is amping up her role in Bachelor Nation, she also once belonged to the Brat Pack (for a brief, shining moment).
Vassos portrayed an extra in the 1985 classic St. Elmo's Fire, riding a bicycle past a fraternity house approximately 52 minutes into the film. The inaugural Golden Bachelorette revealed her brush with the John Hughes glitterati in an interview with Entertainment Tonight while discussing her celebrity crush.
"I love Rob Lowe," she said. "I think he's so freaking handsome, and he's funny, and he's a great actor. I was actually an extra in a movie that he was in, so I met him in person. I've loved him since I was 21 years old. I was in St. Elmo's Fire. You can see me, like, in a split second as an extra."
ET also happened to have footage of Vassos in their own archives from a set visit to St. Elmo's Fire.
The film, which premiered the same year the iconic moniker the Brat Pack was coined, follows a group of Georgetown University post-graduates and their struggles to adjust to adult life after college. It was filmed on location in Washington, D.C.
The Brat Pack label was invented by New York Magazine reporter David Blum in his 1985 profile of a young Emilio Estevez. In his new documentary, Brats, Andrew McCarthy digs into the nickname and the ways he believes it harmed the careers of all the young actors perceived to be part of the group.
"I just remember seeing that cover and thinking, 'Oh, f---,'" McCarthy recalls in the doc. "From then on, my career and the career of everyone who was involved was branded to the Brat Pack."
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"I perceived it to be very harmful," McCarthy says later in the film. "Marty Scorsese, Steven Spielberg's not going to call up somebody who's in the Brat Pack. That's what that article was about. It's just a name. What's it matter? But it did matter. And it did affect how I was perceived in the business, certainly; how I was perceived in the world, and how I perceived myself for many years."
But for Vassos, it was an opportunity to be in a movie and meet her celebrity crush, Lowe. Lowe will not be one of the men vying for Vassos's roses (unless ABC has a major trick up their sleeve), but perhaps her suitors should watch St. Elmo's Fire to get an idea of the kind of guy she's looking for.
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