‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ star Mia Sara has opened up about her grueling experience filming John Hughes’ iconic 1986 film and why she left Hollywood.
“Making ‘Ferris Bueller’ wasn’t a great experience for me, so I don’t do many interviews,” the actress who played Sloane Peterson told The Sunday Times.
“I know how precious this film is and I don’t want to disappoint people, but things didn’t work out with John,” she said of the director, who died in 2009.
Sarah, 59, described Hughes as a “strange guy” and said: “He wanted us all to hang out together and introduce him to French New Wave cinema.”
“But he was frustrated by that desire because the others were seasoned actors and I was a sassy New Yorker who had been watching all those movies,” she explained. “I didn’t have the emotional maturity to deal with other people’s egos or my own.”
Despite not having the best memories on set, the “Timecop” star recalled having a “huge crush” on her on-screen boyfriend Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick.
“It was so unrequited,” she said of Broderick secretly dating his on-screen sister, Jeannie Buehler, played by actress Jennifer Gray.
Additionally, Sarah said she was not “satisfied” with her acting career and eventually moved on to writing poetry.
“I just didn’t have the resilience to deal with the audition process,” Sara admitted. “There are some things in my career that I’m really proud of, but overall it hasn’t been a happy career for me.”
Sarah’s other credits include the 1988 film “Murder Apprentice,” the 1990 film “Daughter of Darkness,” and the 2002 film “Lost in Oz.”
One of her last roles was in the 2013 film “Pretty Pretty,” after which she took a 10-year hiatus from screens until her latest film, “The Life of Chuck,” in 2025.
She starred as Sarah Krantz in the Mike Flanagan-directed film starring Tom Hiddleston.
Sarah made her first red carpet appearance in over 10 years at a film premiere in June 2025.
She was all smiles at the star-studded event at the Hollywood Region Theater in California.
At the time, the actress told People magazine that she returned to the spotlight to co-star with Flanagan after falling in love with his 2021 horror series Midnight Mass.
