Actress Molly Ringwald says she conceived her daughter, Mathilda, in one of the most iconic, albeit unlikely, places.
"I believe that Mathilda was conceived in the dressing room at Studio 54 right at the end of my run playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret in 2003,” The Breakfast Club star told The Times in a recent interview. “It’s so Mathilda to be conceived in such an iconic place.”
For the uninitiated, Studio 54 was a glamorous Broadway theater and former nightclub located in Midtown, Manhattan, known to have been frequented by historic figures like Liza Minelli, Andy Warhol, and Truman Capote.
"I was 36 when (Mathilda) was born," Ringwald continued, adding that she "always" knew she wanted children but that getting pregnant took longer than she had hoped.
“At that age the biological clock is a real thing and it had kind of become deafening," she added. "All I could think about was: Must have kids.”
Ringwald shares Mathilda, 20, with her husband of 23 years, Panio Gianopoulos. The couple also share fraternal twins Adele and Roman, 14.
“The hardest thing about motherhood was realizing that my time was not my own,” Ringwald told The Times in the same interview. “As an actress, I’ve traveled a lot and learned to live with instability, but that’s not great for kids. That’s something I am always looking to improve on and luckily I have a husband who is a planner and is very stable.”
In 2009, after the birth of her twins, Ringwald once again praised her husband for helping her juggle the never-ending demands that come with being a working mom.
"It really helps to have a very supportive partner and a lot of flexibility," she told People at the time.
In a 2011 interview with Good Housekeeping, Rinwald said her husband agreed to start a family sooner than he had initially planned, in part because of their age difference.
“He’s seven years younger than me, and I was pushing for kids, so he decided to do it while he was younger than he had originally anticipated being,” she said at the time, adding that her husband took to fatherhood innately.
"I thought because I was a woman, I would know what to do all the time," she added, "but I really think he's the natural."
