The Cast of ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,’ Then and Now

• Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller

  

  A baby-faced Broderick had his breakout role a few years before Ferris Beuller, in 1983’s WarGames. In the cyber-thriller, he plays a student who, while trying to hack into a video game, accidentally breaks into a military computer and nearly starts a nuclear war. The same year, he became the youngest actor to win a Tony for best featured actor in a play for Brighton Beach Memoirs. Ferris Bueller quickly became another calling card for the young actor, as he played the ultimate slacker with a heart of gold, outwitting his high school principal (Jeffery Jones) and antagonizing his sister (Jennifer Grey) in pursuit of a good time. 

  In ’87, personal tragedy struck when Broderick and Grey, who were dating at the time, got in a serious car accident while vacationing in Northern Ireland. Two people in the other car were killed, while Broderick and Grey were both injured. In the years since the accident, Broderick (who was driving) has spoken of it only rarely, but has expressed remorse for what happened. The couple broke up not long afterward, and Broderick went on to marry Sarah Jessica Parker in 1997. The couple, who have three children, starred together on Broadway in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite in 2022. 

  Broderick continued to be an in-demand leading actor, starring opposite Helen Hunt in Project X (1987), about an Air Force project involving chimps, followed by a role as an Army recruit in Biloxi Blues (1988), a part he had previously played on Broadway. He re-upped in the military for Glory (1989), playing the commander of a Black unit in the Union Army during the Civil War, with co-stars including Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman. A few years later, Broderick was Emmy-nominated for a TV movie version of A Life in the Theatre (1993), in which he starred opposite Jack Lemmon. 

  In the Disney classic The Lion King (1994), Broderick voiced adult Simba, and in The Cable Guy (1996), he played a poor sap who gets more than he bargained for when Jim Carrey’s titular character hooks him up with free cable. In 1999’s Election, the tables were turned on an actor best known as a slacker student when he played the high school social studies teacher in the cult comedy starring Reese Witherspoon. That year, he also played the title character in a live-action feature version of Inspector Gadget. 

  A regular presence on the Broadway stage, Broderick won a second Tony for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 1995. He would go on to star opposite Nathan Lane in The Producers in 2001, and reprised the part in the 2005 film version of the musical about two men trying to get rich by intentionally producing a Broadway flop. During this time, he also found time to play Walter, the husband of Nicole Kidman’s Joanna, in The Stepford Wives (2004). Broderick’s film résumé also includes The Tale of Desperaux (2008), Tower Heist (2011), Manchester by the Sea (2016) and Painkiller (2023). On television, he’s popped up on shows like Modern Family, 30 Rock, The Conners and, more recently, Only Murders in the Building and Elsbeth. 

• Alan Ruck as Cameron Frye

  

  As the high-strung and fatalistic Cameron, who finally snaps when he realizes a pair of parking attendants took his father’s prized 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California for a joy ride, Ruck played the stressed-out yang to Ferris’ laid-back yin. The actor had already appeared in half a dozen movies and TV movies before Bueller, making his debut in Bad Boys (1983) — not the one you’re thinking about, this one centers on a reform school and stars Sean Penn. He also already knew co-star Broderick, as they performed together on Broadway in Biloxi Blues in 1985.

  After the success of Ferris Bueller, Ruck starred opposite Charlie Sheen (who also had a small but memorable part in Bueller, see below) and Kerri Green in road-trip dramedy Three for the Road (1987) and appeared in Three Fugitives (1989), a comedy led by Nick Nolte and Martin Short about bank robbers on the run, among other films. He appeared as a tourist in Speed (1994), and the same year played the captain of the Enterprise-B in the feature Star Trek: Generations. That was soon followed by Twister (1996), the classic tornado-chasing disaster film in which he played Robert “Rabbit” Nurick.

  Ruck’s next memorable project was Spin City, in which he played the lovably sleazy Stuart Bondek for the show’s entire run, from 1996-2002. After the sitcom wrapped, he played a neighbor of the central family in Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), a school principal in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (2008) and a ghost dad in the Ricky Gervais-starring Ghost Town (2008). During the aughts and 2010s, he also kept busy appearing on shows like NCIS, Psych, Burn Notice, Cougar Town, Boston Legal and Scrubs.  

  After bouncing around for a few years in this way, zeitgeist-capturing success struck again when Ruck joined HBO’s smash-hit Succession, which ran from 2018-23. He played Connor Roy, the politically inclined half-sibling who is an outsider in his own family and eventually runs for president. Ruck shared in the series’ awards riches, snagging an Emmy nomination and joining the cast in winning two SAG Awards for the ensemble. 

  On Broadway, Ruck replaced Broderick as Leo Bloom in The Producers in 2005 and starred as Sidney in Absurd Person Singular, which opened later that year. He met his wife, Mireille Enos, while working on the latter play, and the couple share two children. He was previously married to Claudia Stefany, with whom he also has two children.  

• Mia Sara as Sloane Peterson

  

  Sara, who played Ferris’ cool and compassionate girlfriend Sloane, made her acting debut in 1983 on All My Children before landing a role in Ridley Scott’s fantasy epic Legend (1985). 

  After Bueller, she starred in the miniseries Queenie with Kirk Douglas and appeared in the film Apprentice to Murder (1988) as well as Shadows in the Storm (1988), Big Time (1989) and Melanie Griffith starrer A Stranger Among Us (1992), among others. Notably, in the time-travel sci-fi action movie Timecop (1994), she played star Jean-Claude Van Damme’s wife, whose murder is a pivot point in the plot.  

  In the horror movie The Maddening (1995), Sara played a young mother held hostage by an insane couple. She also worked on numerous TV movies and miniseries, including 1997’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and later played Harley Quinn on The WB’s Birds of Prey (2002-03). She starred with Ron Perlman in Hoodlum & Son (2003), a 1930s-set mob drama, and played an ally of the Wicked Witch of the West in Dorothy and the Witches of Oz (2012), in which an adult Dorothy realizes the popular books are based on suppressed experiences from her youth. 

  Sara now lives in England, where she writes poetry, and recently returned to the screen in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck (2024) after an 11-year absence. 

  She is married to Brian Henson, the son of Jim Henson, with whom she has a daughter. He directed her in the 2001 miniseries Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story. She was previously married to Jason Connery, Sean Connery’s son, after they co-starred with Michael Caine in the TV movie Bullet to Beijing (1995). She and Connery share a son. 

• Jennifer Grey as Jeanie Bueller

  

  By the time she played Ferris Bueller’s type-A, jealous sister, Grey had already appeared in several movies, including 1984’s Reckless, Red Dawn and The Cotton Club. But 1987, the year after Bueller came out, was when she truly made her mark as Baby in Dirty Dancing. 

  After the iconic film co-starring Patrick Swayze, Grey would struggle to reach those pop-culture defining heights again. She starred in Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989) along with Matt Dillon, Madonna and Ruck, followed by a string of TV movies. In the feature film Wind (1992), a romantic drama about yacht races, she starred opposite Matthew Modine. She also was in Bounce (2000), a romance starring Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow. 

  Grey guest starred on Friends as Rachel’s former best friend Mindy, who marries Rachel’s ex-fiancé Barry (she only appeared once in the role, later saying that performance anxiety kept her from returning; Jana Marie Hupp took over the part in another episode). From 1999-2001, she starred in the ABC sitcom It’s Like You Know … as herself, which touched on the real-life backlash she experienced after a nose job. 

  More recently, Grey starred in Amazon’s ’80s-set series Red Oaks from 2014-17, and did voice work on shows like Phineas and Ferb and the Netflix movie Duck Duck Goose (2018). She also appeared in films including Untogether (2018), Bittersweet Symphony (2019) and on television in shows like Grey’s Anatomy and The Conners. In A Real Pain (2024), she played Marcia, who’s part of the tour group that Kieran Culkin’s Benji and Jesse Eisenberg’s David join in Europe. After that, she played the main character’s mom in Julia Stiles’ feature directing debut, the romantic drama Wish You Were Here (2025). Meanwhile, a sequel to Dirty Dancing featuring Grey is reportedly in development, though it was delayed from its originally announced 2024 release date. 

  Grey dated Broderick after the release of Ferris Bueller, and after that was in a serious relationship with Johnny Depp. She was married to Clark Gregg — the actor known as Agent Coulson from the Marvel Universe — for 20 years, and the couple co-starred in the 2006 Lifetime movie Road to Christmas. They have a daughter. In 2022, Grey released a memoir, Out of the Corner. 

• Jeffrey Jones as Principal Ed Rooney

  

  The same year that he played the tenacious yet comically outmatched principal who tries to catch Ferris Bueller in his lies, Jones starred in another film, which received a more mixed reception but ultimately earned a cult following: Howard the Duck. That film follows an intelligent duck-like alien who lands on Earth, and Jones played a scientist who is possessed by the Dark Overlord of the Universe and kidnaps Howard the Duck’s human love interest, Beverly.  

  In 1988, Jones found success again as Charles Deetz, Lydia’s (Winona Ryder) straitlaced father, in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. He later appeared in Burton’s Ed Wood (1994) and Sleepy Hollow (1999). However, he would not return for 2024’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as it is revealed in a stop-motion scene that his character was killed by a shark after a plane crash, leaving Delia (Catherine O’Hara) a widow; his funeral is the reason the family returns to their haunted home. 

  Jones also had a part in The Hunt for Red October (1990) and played the greedy Thomas Putnam in The Crucible (1996), reuniting with Ryder. He played Eddie Barzoon, the managing partner of the law firm where Keanu Reeves works in The Devil’s Advocate (1997), and was Uncle Crenshaw in Stuart Little (1999). He also appeared in Company Man (2000); Heartbreakers (2001), starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Gene Hackman; and Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001), among other projects. 

  In 2003, Jones pled no contest when he was accused of hiring a 14-year-old boy to pose naked for photos, and was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to register as a sex offender. After this, there was a dropoff in his career, though he played A.W. Merrick on HBO’s Deadwood from 2004-06 and returned for the Deadwood movie in 2019.  

• Charlie Sheen as the Boy in the Police Station

  

  Born Carlos Irwin Estévez, Charlie Sheen is the son of Martin Sheen, and made an uncredited appearance in Badlands, in which his father starred, before the age of 10. In Ferris Bueller, the then 21-year-old appears in one scene in which Jennifer Grey’s Jeanie has been sent to the police station for “falsely” reporting an intruder in her home. After unashamedly admitting he was arrested for drugs, he imparts some wisdom to Jeanie regarding her problem with Ferris, and the two make out. 

  In 1986, the year that Bueller came out, Sheen appeared in several other movies, most notably Oliver Stone’s Platoon, about which the actor wrote in detail in his 2025 memoir. In the ’80s and ’90s, Sheen’s star would continue to rise, as he appeared in films like Wall Street (1987), playing stockbroker Bud Foxx opposite Michael Douglas; Young Guns (1988), alongside his brother Emilio Estévez; Clint Eastwood buddy cop movie The Rookie (1990); and The Three Musketeers (1993), as Aramis. 

  He turned to television in 2000 with Spin City, taking over the starring role after the departure of Michael J. Fox, whose Parkinson’s diagnosis had made it difficult for him to perform. After that show wrapped, Sheen went on to star in Two and a Half Men, becoming the highest-paid male sitcom actor of all time. During this period, he also appeared in several of the Scary Movie films. 

  After a very public meltdown — which was attributed to drugs but which Sheen later said was caused by overuse of testosterone cream — and the disintegration of his relationship with Men creator Chuck Lorre, Sheen was banned from the Warner Bros. lot and embarked on a national tour where he made “Winning!” into a catchphrase. Despite Sheen’s defiance, he was replaced on Men by Ashton Kutcher. He returned to TV in 2012 with Anger Management, but his casting in major film and TV projects certainly slowed in subsequent years. In 2015, he announced that he was HIV positive, and in 2025 he released his memoir The Book of Sheen and was the subject of the Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen. 

• Ben Stein as the Economics Teacher

  

  Stein has an economics degree and has worked as a lawyer and presidential speechwriter, as well as an author and columnist for top-flight newspapers like The Wall Street Journal. Despite all this, he is perhaps most iconic for the line “Bueller? Bueller?”, which he delivered as an economics teacher calling roll. 

  After Ferris Bueller, the man famous for his dry delivery went on to appear as an airport representative in Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), a public works official in Ghostbusters II (1989), a teacher in Richie Rich (1994) and a psychologist in The Mask (1994). He also had parts in My Girl 2 (1994) and Casper (1995) and appeared on 11 episodes of The Wonder Years.

  He notably hosted 99 episodes of Win Ben Stein’s Money (1997-2002) and was a panelist on game shows like Match Game and Hollywood Squares, as well as a judge on Star Search (2003) and a commentator on CBS News Sunday Morning. He also did voicework including on the TV series The Emperor’s New School and made guest appearances on Family Guy. More recently, Stein touched down in 2018’s The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time. He’s currently listed on several speakers’ bureau websites as being available for public lectures, with fees posted at anywhere between $20,000 and $100,000, and writes a column called “Ben Stein’s Diary” for The American Spectator. He’s also written more than 20 nonfiction books and seven novels. 

• Cindy Pickett as Katie Bueller and Lyman Ward as Tom Bueller

  

  Does it seem like Ferris’ parents have great chemistry? That should be no surprise, since Pickett and Ward got married in real life after they met while working on the film. They had two children and also played a married couple in the Stephen King adaptation Sleepwalkers (1992); however, they divorced that same year. 

  A glance at Pickett’s IMDb page will tell you that she likes to keep busy: The actress (whose early roles included the leading part in Roger Vadim’s Night Games and a stint on Guiding Light) has regularly appeared in three or more projects per year throughout most of her career. After she played Ferris’ well-meaning mom, highlights include a role in the ABC miniseries Amerika, which posits a world where the Soviet Union has taken over the U.S., as well as HBO white-supremacy drama Into the Homeland. She went on to play Dr. Carol Novino on 50 episodes of St. Elsewhere, as well as a brave doctor in the deep-sea monster movie DeepStar Six (1989). In a more comedic vein, she played Pauly Shore’s mother-in-law-to-be in Son in Law (1993). She’s also guest starred on series ranging from Murder, She Wrote to NYPD Blue, CSI: Miami, Ghost Whisperer, Burn Notice and The Mentalist. 

  Ward reunited with John Hughes in Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and shortly thereafter was cast in the Canadian drama Milk and Honey (1988). He was Chief Gallo in The Beverly Hillbillies movie (1993); a member of the Secret Service in the blockbuster Independence Day (1996); and Mr. Wyler, father of the jock Jake, in Not Another Teen Movie (2001). In between, he guested on shows including The A-Team, Silver Spoons, Family Ties, The Wonder Years, Melrose Place, JAG, Monk and Transparent, to name just a few of his many credits. 

• Edie McClurg as Grace

  

  Before McClurg became the fan-favorite school secretary in Ferris Bueller, she started her career at NPR, where she helped broadcast the Nixon Tapes for her local Kansas City affiliate station. She moved to Los Angeles when she decided to make the switch to improv acting, and worked with The Groundlings before landing her first film role in Carrie (1976). 

  The actress met John Hughes while working on 1983’s Mr. Mom, for which he was the screenwriter. That led to numerous collaborations, including Bueller and 1987’s Planes, Trains & Automobiles, in which she played a Midwestern car rental agent who refuses to take Steve Martin’s attitude. She also played the ever-cheerful neighbor Mrs. Poole on the sitcom Valerie, which ran from 1986-91 (also known as The Hogan Family). She appeared in popular films including Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992) and Natural Born Killers (1994). 

  A prolific voice actor, McClurg performed in such animated movies as The Little Mermaid (1989), as Prince Eric’s maid; A Bug’s Life (1998) as Dr. Flora; the Cars franchise as Minny the minivan; Wreck-It Ralph (2012) as the Nicelander Mary; and Frozen (2013) as a castle servant. She voiced characters on television, too, including on Higglytown Heroes, Clifford the Big Red Dog, 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and The Addams Family.  

  McClurg is retired and reportedly has been diagnosed with dementia. She entered a conservatorship requested by her family in 2019. 

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