Andrew McCarthy on adult loneliness, which Brat Pack alum he'd want as a travel buddy

Clare Mulroy, USA TODAYThu, March 26, 2026 at 5:14 PM UTC

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NEW YORK – As is practically a rite of passage for fathers, Andrew McCarthy got roasted by his son.

"You don't really have any friends, do you, Dad?"

The “St. Elmo’s Fire” actor, 63, known once for his Hollywood days as a member of the Brat Pack and now as a travel writer, had friends. He just didn’t see them very often. That counts, right?

The innocuous question kick-started a new type of road trip for McCarthy, who drove across the country for six weeks on a whim to reconnect with old friends. In “Who Needs Friends?” (out now from Grand Central Publishing), McCarthy interrogates male loneliness and friendship, striking up conversations at gas stations, diners and roadside attractions. But for all the times he’d “accost” strangers asking to talk to them about their friends, surprisingly, no one said no.

The views shifted from state to state, but also from generation to generation. Young people, McCarthy says, were more forthcoming with their loneliness. Even his own kids are “much more accessible to acknowledging their emotional life” than he was at their age, he says. Many older men would “snap” a quick denial in his direction.

“Whenever I answer that quick and that fast and that sharp (it’s because) I'm either lying or I'm afraid,” McCarthy says. “Because to men, particularly, loneliness can be tied somehow to some kind of weakness and weakness is the one thing a man can never present as. So then people just get further walled into this loneliness because they can’t allow themselves to be seen in that way.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Question: When you hit the road, did you know there was a book to write?

Andrew McCarthy

McCarthy: No. It was an accidental 10,000-mile road trip, completely. I set off to reunite with some of my friends I hadn't seen in years and years. So I drove down to Baltimore to see one friend, and that was a really lovely reunion. So I thought, well, my other buddy lives in Kentucky. That's not that far. I'll just drive to Kentucky. Then I was in Kentucky. I had a nice reunion. Well, how far really is Dallas from Kentucky? And then I was halfway across the country, so I thought, well, just keep going.

There was no plan anywhere. I didn't use any GPS because I hate being told what to do. I got one of those big Rand McNally map books and I was just consulting that the whole way.

I hate highway driving. I'm terrified of trucks. I rode backroads the whole way, and that's where you meet people. There's no connection that happens when you're driving I-80 across the country. So I drove back roads the whole way and I stopped when I was hungry and slept when I was tired. And it was an amazing experience and I encountered a lot of people. I rediscovered an America in a way I'd never had before.

Which strangers stick with you the most?

These two old guys in Ohio, they're in their 70s, retired cops.

They were amazing. They'd been friends for 60 years and they were so intimate and so close to each other and they see each other multiple times a week for 60 years and they've been right there with each other their whole way through life. That seems so alien to me. I never had that kind of tight connection with someone. I thought my life would have been so different had I had that kind of person who knew everything about me next to me like that. And it's different than a spouse.

I found them and their accessibility to each other and their openness and their sense of intimacy without being threatened in any way. Lou and Bobby were their names, and they go, "Yeah, we started saying I love you to each other recently." I say I love you to my wife, to my kids. Why can't I tell my best bud that I love them? And then Bobby said, "Yeah, we haven't graduated to goodnight kiss yet." But they're aware of that sort of fear of intimacy that men have. These guys just didn't have that. They knew who they were and they knew what their relationship was and how valuable it was in their lives. To see that was just, I hate to say inspirational, but it was.

Two guys I met, Lawrence and Steve, in Austin said something to me that really stuck with me. They just said, "Look, this isn't a big deal. Friendship is just normal." It was so benign, that comment, that it really went deep. It's just normal. That's just what should be happening. So many of us now are so far away from that because for whatever reason – careers, lives, internet, our phones – we've just atrophied. That's at a great expense, I think. And that certainly was my experience. My wife looked at me at one point and said, and I'm a very introverted guy in a lot of ways, and she said, "Your life is getting smaller."

That hit me like a ton of bricks and she didn't mean it as a compliment.

I felt like there was this sort of emotional safety net spreading under me as I drove west. I found myself laughing more, being more relaxed, having more internal space, my mind looping less. You stay alone in your mind and it just goes on and I can wear a groove into a rut pretty quickly without noticing it when it crossed over that invisible line. Friendship helps relieve a lot of that.

How do we get to a place where that is normal?

I'm a big believer in that 90% of life is showing up. I did one thing right on this trip, I showed up. I got in the car and I went to their house and they were like, "You drove here from New York to see me?" I'm like, "Yeah, dude, you're important in my life." I needed to acknowledge that.

It took the friendship to a deeper level in a way that was not in any kind of sentimental way, but just in a real and a profound way: "You mean a lot to me. You meant a lot to me then. You're still a part of my life and that's important to me.”

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You were also experiencing fame while you were forming those early adult friendships. Did those Brat Pack days influence your perception of community?

Well, it's impossible to say. I think fame changes people on a cellular level. And so I'm a different person now, fundamentally, than I would have been had I not become well-known to a certain generation at a certain moment in time. I can have no idea what my life would have been like had that not happened, but it's like the tree is growing and then there's this big rock or something and then it grows around it and maybe it's a beautiful tree, but who knows what it would have been like if that didn't happen.

It's benefited my life massively in huge ways. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm fairly introverted and so it's opened doors for me that never would have opened. In other ways, it's brought people to me that are not genuinely interested in me, but that you can see through very quickly. But it changed my place in the world forever.

Do you still keep up with any of the Brat Pack members?

I made a documentary about that several years ago … and it was a wonderful experience because in many ways it allowed me to have much more affection for my youth than I had. We all had so much more affection for each other now than we did when we were younger.

I could look at whoever, Rob (Lowe) or Demi (Moore), Emilio (Estevez) and just look at them and know we know something about each other that no one else knows. We went through that. I don't know what your day-to-day life is, but I know a certain part of you very intimately.

I'm bonded to them in a very real, permanent way.

I’m going to ask some rapid-fire road trip questions. What’s your go-to road food?

McDonald's french fries.

What’s on your road trip playlist?

I started listening to audiobooks a lot when I was on this trip. So I like a good audiobook, but I'm from New Jersey, I end up defaulting back to Bruce Springsteen a lot. It's good driving music. I got into the blues a lot when I was down in Mississippi.

What audiobook would you recommend?

I listened to a bunch of Joseph Conrad when I was on the road. “Heart of Darkness” was incredible. It's read by Kenneth Branagh. It's an amazing version of it. It's fantastic. “Lord Jim,” I loved, and a book called “Victory.”

What’s one destination in the U.S. you think everyone should travel to?

I was shocked and thrilled and delighted by Mississippi. I'd never been to Mississippi. I've had a Northerner’s fear of the Deep South, I think. And I didn't understand what Mississippi was at all. I've been back four or five times since, and I can't wait to go back.

Which Brat Pack member would be the best road trip companion and why?

Wow, huh. I don’t know, Demi. Just ‘cause.

Between planes, trains and automobiles, what’s your favorite mode of transport and why?

Trains. I hate driving and I'm terrified of flying. So, process of elimination.

What is one quality that you appreciate in a true friend?

Humor.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Andrew McCarthy explored loneliness, adult friendships on road trip

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