Life

The “Jacky” star of “Holiday,” “The Breakfast Club” and now “Jack Reacher” shares his travel memories.
Like his character Rusty Griswold in the classic 1983 comedy “Holiday,” Anthony Michael Hall loves road trips, especially ones with wacky antics.

Case in point: In 2020, the “Jacky” member toured Texas for a series of drive-in theaters, reminiscing about his iconic 1980s films “The Breakfast Club,” “The Babysitter” and “Sixteen Candles.” Afterwards, the “Jacky” member and his wife, Lucia Oskrova, packed up their Pekingese and a few electric bikes and drove back to their home in Washington state in a Range Rover SUV. They stumbled upon the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs and had so much fun in a suite off the golf course at the luxury 5,000-acre resort in the Rockies that they extended their stay and one day Hall took his car in for service.
“On the way, I saw this neon green Porsche Carrera 4S and I bought it on a whim!” the 57-year-old actor told Travel & Leisure, as he drove the eye-catching car back to his hotel to surprise his then-fiancee. “I’ve literally never made such an impulse purchase in my life – it was definitely my most random purchase! But I loved it so much. I’m married now, but this car is my girlfriend’s. It’s so beautiful!”

He arranged to have the Range Rover shipped back, and the two ended up driving the bright green sports car through Wyoming and Montana, including Yellowstone and Jackson Hole. “I gotta tell you, Rusty Griswold is way cooler than Clark Griswold because my style is so unique!” he said of the epic road trip. “I felt like a proud Griswold.”

This “vacation mentality” has stuck with the Boston-born Hall. He now lives in the Los Angeles area and has enjoyed traveling the world throughout his four-decade career. “One of the joys of my job that a lot of people don’t express is exploration,” he says. “You find a new job, you’re in a new place, and you can really enjoy it.”

Recently, he traveled to Toronto to star in the third season of Amazon Prime’s action-crime series Jack Reacher, which premiered last month. He first stayed at the Soho Met Hotel, owned by the Metropolitan Hotel Group, and ate “almost every day” at the hotel’s Pizzeria Moretti, which serves recipes inspired by his Italian grandmother. “I always joke that my memo is different from the other Jack Reacher actors,” Hall says. “They have a memo to exercise every day, and I have a memo to eat out every day!”

After the holidays, when the tourist season returned, he rented a house and moved from the city center to the suburbs with his wife and son. “The cool thing about Toronto is that you don’t get on the highway. You walk on flat ground and suddenly you’re in some really cool places,” he says of the “really fun” city.

Canada holds special meaning for the star, as he filmed the USA Network’s Stephen King drama The Dead Zone in Vancouver (which aired from 2002 to 2007), and it was there that he met his wife.

Another place he recently returned to was his childhood home of New York City, where he participated in promotional appearances on The Kelly Clarkson Show and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (which he called “a high point in his career”), as well as the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live. Hall, who became the youngest cast member of SNL at the age of 17 in 1985, calls himself “just a small part” of the sketch comedy show’s legacy.

All three shows took place at the iconic 30 Rock at Rockefeller Center. “It’s just an architectural wonder, with beautiful reliefs all over the hallways — it’s just an exquisite, beautiful building,” he says. “I think a lot of people feel the same way every time they go back.”

During these trips, he stayed at the JW Marriott Essex Court and the Park Hyatt, particularly liking the latter’s location near the Russian Tea Room and Carnegie Hall. “I grew up on the Upper West Side, and all of a sudden I was staying at the best hotel on 57th Street—it was a real treat and a really great experience,” he says.

With all that business travel, Hall also took more high-end personal trips, including a honeymoon at the St. Regis Bora Bora Resort, planned by his wife. “She does a great job, but her taste is luxurious—and so is mine,” he says. “When you’re there, you don’t even want to leave!”

But time stands still when it comes to Hall’s ’80s classics, which he’s always happy to revisit. He even has some travel tips for fans based on their favorite movies.

For fans of “Holiday,” he recommends studio buffs head to Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California, an alternative to Wally World. “I’ll never forget getting on this rickety wooden coaster that was supposed to be out of production years ago,” he said of the original Colossus, which has now been refurbished in steel. “I was the only guy that got along with John Candy on the first car,” he said. “He was such a good guy. He was Uncle Buck.”

He also said the movie’s iconic theme park ending was never intended to happen because it was a Warner Bros. movie and couldn’t be filmed at Disneyland, where Wally World is based.

Rusty Griswold did end up at Disneyland, though, and became a running joke for fans when he played a security guard in a 2019 episode of The Golden Years. So Hall also recommends Disneyland to movie fans, as well as Universal Studios Hollywood and Walt Disney World in Florida, especially now that he’s a big fan of theme parks as a “new dad.”

Both The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles were filmed in and around filmmaker John Hughes’ home state of Illinois, in “fun suburbs like Skokie and Evanston,” Hall said. That life-changing detention took place at the famous Maine North High School, now home to the Illinois State Police. Hall knows this all too well because fans send him photos every March 24, the movie’s detention day.

The Brat Packer is pleased that set tours have spawned an industry of companies organizing tours of iconic film locations, like On Location Tours’ Chicago suburban film locations tour, which stops at the locations of The Breakfast Club and The Untold Story.

It’s no surprise, then, that for Hall, location is just as important as the project itself: “I remember reading an article by Michael Caine a few years ago where he said that at this stage in my life, I choose projects based solely on where I’m going.” Hall’s latest project is no different, with the upcoming film The Halloween Store, produced by Kenan Thompson and John Ryan Jr. and shot on location in Hawaii.

While the destination is important, the journey itself is just as important. When asked which of the Ty Bitch gang members would make the best travel companion, Hall didn’t hesitate to point to The Breakfast Club co-star Judd Nelson.

“Last year we were in Pittsburgh for a book signing, and then he and I were traveling back home to Los Angeles. We were in Chicago O’Hare for a layover—it was like Bender and Brian Johnson in the movie,” Hall says. “We were two buddies, just walking around the airport, going to the bookstore, getting a beer, having a burger. Judd is always joking around, so it felt like traveling with Bender!”

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