Girls, interrupted

Ellen Page is just the latest actor to hit the teen movie jackpot. Cath Clarke runs through her predecessors

Winona Ryder

  1. Heathers
  2. Production year: 1989
  3. Country: USA
  4. Cert (UK): 18
  5. Runtime: 102 mins
  6. Directors: Michael Lehmann
  7. Cast: Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty, Winona Ryder
  8. More on this film

"Did you have a brain tumour for breakfast?" The put-downs in Heathers, the film in which a teenage Winona Ryder sells out her true friend Betty for a bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke-heads, still have their bite. If you think Ellen Page gets good lines in Juno, just remember Heathers (the jock at a funeral: "Jesus God in heaven, why'd you have to kill such hot snatch?"). Ryder had already made Beetlejuice; later came Edward Scissorhands; then her engagement to Johnny Depp made them poster couple for the dyed-black 90s generation. As for Noni today, she did get busted shoplifting, but she giggled about it afterwards in a Marc Jacobs advert.

Lindsay Lohan

It was all looking so good for Lindsay for about five minutes in 2004 after Freaky Friday and the brilliant bitch-fighting fest Mean Girls. In those days she was working with proper directors and everything - Robert Altman, for one. Since then, it's been easier to follow her career in the red tops. She managed to stay sober at her 21st birthday - attached to an electronic tag that monitored her alcohol intake. That was after rehab, but before two drink and drive run-ins, an arrest for cocaine possession and a spell in the clink. The last reports had her cocktail in hand, but that was at least four days ago, so who knows.

Claire Danes

In the mid-90s Danes was the darling of plaid-shirted, moody teenage girls everywhere when she mooned after Jared Leto in the grungy high-school show My So-Called Life. Then came MTV Shakespeare, in the shape of Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio. But for all the promise, Danes - with her particularly severe side-parting - has turned out to be a bit of a square. She's not looking too hot on the career front, either, after Terminator 3 and the so-called romcom Shopgirl. Romeo + Juliet director Baz Lurhman called her "the Meryl Streep of her generation", but about the closest she's come is playing Streep's daughter in The Hours.

Molly Ringwald

Of the five kids hauled in for Saturday morning detention in The Breakfast Club, the indie girls always preferred basket-case Ally Sheedy, shaking dandruff on to the desk. But it was rich-bitch Molly Ringwald who became the princess of the mid-80s brat pack. She did a classic teen turn in Sixteen Candles ("You need four inches of bod and a great birthday"), then saw the other side of the tracks in Pretty in Pink, rustling up her prom dress on her sewing machine and fending off Blane. She may not have the barbed tongue of some of these ladies, but Ringwald could take your eye out with one of her dirty looks.

Alicia Silverstone

Alicia Silverstone is the sad sack of the bunch. Her bright-as-a-button Beverly Hills clothes-horse Cher in Clueless took her high-school career very seriously indeed. She was a little bit of a meddler, but as drastic as it got was coaxing the new girl to try out a different ensemble, or pairing off her dorky teachers. Writer-director Amy Heckerling (already an expert on the subject after Fast Times at Ridgemont High) nailed teens, who at their dumbest are often playing the game of dumb teenager: "Isn't my house classic? The columns date all the way back to 1972." Poor Alicia: her movie career went downhill fast. These days there's a lot of television on her CV.

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