The Brat Pack is a nickname given to a group of young actors and actresses who frequently appeared together in teen-oriented coming-of-age films in the 1980s. The term, a play on the Rat Pack from the 1950s and 1960s, was first popularized in a 1985 New York magazine cover story, which described a group of roughly interchangeable, but already highly successful and rich, teen stars. The group has been characterized by the excessive partying of core members such as Rob Lowe, Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez, while their films have been described as representative of "the socially apathetic, cynical, money-possessed and ideologically barren eighties generation." The movies made frequent use of adolescent archetypes, were often set in the suburbs surrounding Chicago, and focused on white, middle-class teenage angst.

The "Brat Pack" moniker, often considered in a pejorative sense, was not known to be used by members of the group. Appearance in one, or both, of the ensemble casts of John Hughes' The Breakfast Club and Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire is often cited as a prerequisite for being a core Brat Pack member.

With this criterion, the most commonly cited members include Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy. Conspicuously absent from most lists is Mare Winningham, the only principal member of either cast who never starred in any other films with any other cast members.

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