"I'm just halfway through my life. If I write it now, I'll just have to write it again later," she says.

Molly Ringwald, is now 42, and isn't quite ready to write her autobiography.

Instead, the redheaded Brat Packer has written Getting the Pretty Back: Friendship, Family and Finding the Perfect Lipstick (It Books, $25.99), out today.

The book is part style guide ("A black blazer can make you look more finished"), part entertaining bible ("Make sure you have enough wine to last"), part mommy handbook ("Don't feel guilty about spending time with your significant other") and, yes, part memoir.

Not that she's writing her life story or anything.

"There is a lot of me in the book, but it's about women in general — about me and my friends, all women," she explains. "There are so many people who have grown up with me that are sort of in this similar situation. That inspired me."

In her acting career, she now finds herself in a situation similar to that of the teen mother she played in 1988's For Keeps but on the other side of the story: as the mother of a teenager.

"The last thing I did that was really big in people's minds were the John Hughes movies where I was playing a teenager, so it seemed like it happened all of a sudden," Ringwald says of her role on ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which returns for a third season June 7. "There was no sexy aunt thrown in there. I don't even think I've played the mother of a toddler. So it's odd in that way."

In real life, however, it's not odd at all, considering Ringwald is the mother of Mathilda, 6, and twins Roman and Adele, 9 months, with writer husband Panio Gianopoulos.

She says her Teenager role "is a bit of a flash forward" into the kids' future, which she hopes won't include acting until they're older.

And, though she realizes her own parents were "naïve" about the perils awaiting a child star, she credits them with her ability to overcome the challenges that can lead to many young actors' downfalls.

"My parents were very present and cared a lot," she says. "They were always people I felt like I could go and talk to, always very nurturing."

Ringwald's personality may have also had something to do with her staying out of trouble, even when she took a detour from college and opted to live in Paris for a few years after the height of her stardom in the late '80s.

"I've always been somewhat bookish, curious about the world and very interested in how I could make myself better and not just get stuck in the one thing," she says.

She now takes pride in nurturing her own brood armed with what she describes as a "very forward-thinking" attitude and gratitude for what her life has become.

It hasn't always been easy, though, which is part of what Getting the Pretty Back is about.

"I was turning 40. Everything shifts and changes and you start thinking about where you're at," she says about writing the book a few years ago. "It's a bit of an angst-filled time."

Now, that angst seems to have made way for joy.




Tags: molly ringwald, brooke shields