Mia Sara Breaks Silence on Rocky ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ Behind-the-Scenes Experience

Forty years after Ferris Bueller’s Day Off premiered, Mia Sara is opening up about why making the iconic film wasn’t the experience fans might assume — and why she eventually left Hollywood behind altogether.

“I don’t really give interviews because making Ferris Bueller was not that good an experience for me,” the actress, who played Sloane Peterson in the 1986 John Hughes-directed comedy, told The Sunday Times, Page Six reported Monday, June 22. “I’m very aware of what a precious thing this movie is, and I don’t want to disappoint people. But I didn’t get along well with John.”

Per the outlet, Sara, 59, described Hughes, who died in 2009, as a “strange guy,” recalling, “He wanted us all to hang out together and to introduce us to the French New Wave films.”

“But the others were seasoned actors and I was a snotty New York kid and had seen all those movies, so he was frustrated in that desire,” she explained, according to the report. “I didn’t have the emotional maturity to deal with other people’s egos, or my own.”

According to the article, despite the rocky set dynamics, Sara admitted she had a “massive crush” on her on-screen love interest, Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick. “It was very much unrequited,” she said, referring to the fact that Broderick was secretly dating his on-screen sister, Jeanie Bueller, played by Jennifer Grey.

Sara also shared that she was never truly “happy” in her acting career, which eventually led her to walk away and focus on writing poetry instead, Page Six reported. “I never really had the resilience to deal with the audition process,” she admitted, per the outlet. “There are some things in my career that I’m really proud of, but overall it was not a happy career for me.”

Beyond Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sara’s credits include the 1988 film Apprentice to Murder, the 1990 movie Daughter of Darkness and the 2002 film Lost in Oz. She took a more than 10-year break from acting following 2013’s Pretty Pretty, before returning for 2025’s The Life of Chuck, in which she starred as Sarah Krantz opposite Tom Hiddleston.