He was the kind of boy who ended up taped to bedroom walls and tucked into school binders — the soft-spoken, soulful face of countless ’80s crushes. With tousled dark hair, a shy smile, and a quiet intensity, Andrew McCarthy made teenage longing feel oddly personal, like he was looking straight at you.

But behind the posters and polished publicity shots, his rise to fame was chaotic, and the life he was living off-camera was far more fragile than it looked.

From New Jersey kid to unexpected starBorn in 1962 in Westfield, New Jersey, Andrew McCarthy grew up far from Hollywood glamour. He was the third of four boys; his mother worked at a newspaper, and his father handled investments. It was a typical, middle-class East Coast upbringing — no industry connections, no obvious path to stardom.
“I just felt sort of very lonely at school. I just didn’t feel like I belonged there,”
he once recalled.

After high school, he enrolled at NYU to study acting — and quickly flamed out.

“I didn’t really go [to class],”
he admitted later. He was expelled after two years.