Anthony Michael Hall knows exactly what’s kept him working in Hollywood for more than five decades, and he isn’t shy about naming it.
“Having a thick skin, and just being game and just wanting to work with the best people you can,” Hall told Fox News Digital. “Just being persistent and tenacious. And thank God I was born with a hard head. But you have to have a thick skin.”
Hall, who broke through as the anxious brain Brian Johnson in 1985’s THE BREAKFAST CLUB, made the comments at a press event for FOX’s new celebrity competition series NATION’S DUMBEST, hosted by British comedian Jack Whitehall. He’s spent 51 years in the industry now, and the new show gave him an unexpected reason to think about what’s carried him through it.
“You have to really want and love what you do,” he added. “So I think that’s it.”
Asked about the biggest lesson he’s learned across five decades of film and television work, Hall pointed to something closer to humility than hustle.
“Stay humble, stay focused, keep your eyes on the road and just keep moving ahead somehow,” he said. “There’s no guarantees of anything in this business, and it’s a tough business, but it’s really great business, so I’m very fortunate.”
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That gratitude showed up again when Hall talked about landing a spot on NATION’S DUMBEST in the first place.
“I feel very blessed,” he said. “This is my 51st year doing this, and this was really a unique thing, because it was something I never expected. It really took me by surprise, and it was a lot of fun.”
Hall also noticed an odd echo of his most famous role. NATION’S DUMBEST drops twelve celebrities back into a classroom, pitting them against pop quizzes, report cards and recess-style games, with the twist that nobody wants to win. Whoever struggles most each week stays in the competition, and the last person standing gets stuck with the title “The Nation’s Dumbest.”
“There was some parallels for sure,” Hall said of the setup. “We all got thrown together. We’re all stuck, we couldn’t really go anywhere. And honestly, we all really got along.”
He said the timing mattered too, arriving during a stretch when his next job wasn’t obvious.
“It was coming into a year where I wasn’t sure where the next job was gonna come, like we often feel in this industry,” he said. “And I got the call, and I was just really excited by it. And I really embraced it and I just went up to Toronto and had a good time shooting it, and everybody was really cool.”
NATION’S DUMBEST premiered July 15 on FOX and streams the next day on Hulu. The cast rounds out with Ice-T, Jon Heder, Hilaria Baldwin, Carmen Electra, Chase Hudson, Elle King, Matt Leinart, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Steve-O, JoJo Siwa and Andrew Yang.
Hall’s THE BREAKFAST CLUB co-stars, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, helped define a generation’s coming-of-age genre, and four decades later, Hall’s still the one showing up for work. His formula sounds almost old-fashioned for an industry built on reinvention: stay grateful, stay humble and let the work speak for itself. For families raising kids on a steady diet of reboots and reality competition shows, that’s a version of longevity worth paying attention to, not because Hall preaches it, but because he’s simply lived it.
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