Movie Star Reveals Shocking Reason She Walked Away from Hollywood

For millions of fans, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a perfect slice of 1980s movie magic.

But for Mia Sara, the actress who played Ferris’ cool and beautiful girlfriend Sloane Peterson, the memories are not exactly sunny.

The 59-year-old star is finally opening up about why she rarely talks about the beloved 1986 comedy — and why her time on the film was not the dream fans might imagine.

“I don’t really give interviews because making Ferris Bueller was not that good an experience for me,” Sara told The Sunday Times.

Sara said she knows how much the John Hughes classic means to people, which is one reason she has stayed quiet for so long.

“I’m very aware of what a precious thing this movie is, and I don’t want to disappoint people,” she said. “But I didn’t get along well with John.”

Hughes, who directed some of the biggest teen movies of the 1980s, died in 2009.

Sara described him as a “strange guy” and said the director wanted the young cast to bond off camera.

According to Sara, Hughes encouraged them to hang out together and introduced them to French New Wave films. But she said the plan did not exactly work on her.

“The others were seasoned actors and I was a snotty New York kid and had seen all those movies,” she said. “So he was frustrated in that desire.”

Looking back, Sara admitted she was not always prepared for the pressure that came with being on a major movie set.

“I didn’t have the emotional maturity to deal with other people’s egos, or my own,” she said.

The movie starred Matthew Broderick as the charming high school slacker Ferris Bueller, Alan Ruck as his nervous best friend Cameron Frye, and Jennifer Grey as Ferris’ furious sister Jeanie.

And while Sara may not have fond memories of the set, she did have one very real teenage crush.

She admitted she had a “massive crush” on Broderick, who played her on-screen boyfriend.

But there was one problem.

“It was very much unrequited,” Sara said.

At the time, Broderick was secretly dating Grey, who played his sister in the film.

Sara went on to appear in projects including Timecop, Apprentice to Murder, Daughter of Darkness, Lost in OZ and Pretty Pretty, but she said acting never brought her real happiness.

“I never really had the resilience to deal with the audition process,” she said. “There are some things in my career that I’m really proud of, but overall it was not a happy career for me.”

Eventually, Sara stepped away from Hollywood and turned to writing poetry.

Her last screen credit before a long break was the 2013 film Pretty Pretty. She then disappeared from the big screen for more than a decade.

But Sara recently made a rare return to Hollywood for the 2025 movie The Life of Chuck, directed by Mike Flanagan and starring Tom Hiddleston.

She also made her first red carpet appearance in over 10 years at the film’s June 2025 premiere at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles.

Sara told People she agreed to return because she became obsessed with Flanagan’s 2021 horror series Midnight Mass.

For fans who still see her as the effortlessly cool Sloane Peterson, Sara’s confession is a surprising peek behind one of the most famous teen movies ever made.

Ferris Bueller may have had the day off.

But for Mia Sara, the movie came with memories she spent decades trying not to relive.