DURING the 1980s The Brat Pack ruled cinema screens and young audiences. Everyone had their favourite, whether it was Demi Moore or Molly Ringwald, Rob Lowe or Emilio Estevez, to name just a handful.

Two decades on and a few have dropped off the radar - Molly Ringwald seems to have disappeared, along with one Andrew McCarthy.

Although the actor has been steadily beavering away on US stage and screen, UK audiences have barely had a glimpse of him for years - unless they've made a trip to the video shop to rent one of his classic hits, including Class, St Elmo's Fire, Pretty In Pink and Mannequin.

Now back on UK screens with cult mini-series Kingdom Hospital produced by Stephen King, he reveals that despite his success during those busy Brat Pack years, at the height of his fame he was struggling with a secret drink problem.

"When I was a kid I drank too much. It took me a few years to realise and a few more to understand I needed to do something about it," he reveals.

"It didn't have anything to do with success. I think something would have happened either way. I had an attraction to it. I may have been able to buy more expensive vodka but I liked drinking vodka either way, if you know what I mean!

"It makes it all very glamorous to say, 'He was young, he was successful and he couldn't handle it' but that has nothing to do with it. I was a guy who found drinking helpful, I did it and it got out of hand.

"It started in my mid-20s and I stopped when I was 29," he explains. "I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do - drinking became a priority as opposed to recreation."

Today Andrew, who is no longer in touch with his fellow Bratpackers, lives a quiet life away from Hollywood with his actress wife Carol Schneider and their two-year-old son Sam.

"I never really hung with them," he says of his former co-stars. "I live in New York and they live in LA. I don't have too many actor friends. I just live my life. And I certainly don't live a showbizzy one."

This scene of domestic bliss was something he never imagined for himself.

"I never in a million years thought I would get married and have a kid. I thought I was good at being alone. I liked doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted," he comments. "But I shifted to realising that connecting was where the action was at."

Fatherhood, as well as leading a steadier life, has certainly had changed him.

"How can it not? If it doesn't I think you're in trouble, you're not paying any attention. I go out to dinner a lot less.

"Fatherhood helps you become more of who you are, which is always a good thing. It's the greatest and hardest thing that's ever happened to me. I'm not sure if I'd like any more - I'm tired this morning so it's a bad time to ask," he adds, laughing.

"Life's certainly much better now. When I was in my 20s I was trying to get my feet on the ground and work out what the hell was going on. I was figuring out what I wanted, what I liked, what was good for me and that kind of stuff.

"I partied in my 20s. If you don't then you're going to later. Better to do it then, do you know what I mean? If you're a good boy all along, at some point you're going to go, 'What have I been doing?' you know? I just think I did what everybody did in their 20s, to a large degree."

Now he's making a name for himself with a new generation thanks to Kingdom Hospital.

"Stephen King says it's 'ER meets The Shining'," says Andrew. "It's a show about a hospital built on sacred ground and the dead are not happy."

The actor plays Dr Hook who saves lives in the surreal hospital where fantasy and reality blur into one.

"When you watch the first one you think, 'What the hell is going on?'. It's a novel for television told in 15 chapters."

Kingdom Hospital is on BBC2 and BBC3 on Sundays.