Before He Was the ‘Karate Kid’, Ralph Macchio Made Us Cry in This ’80s Classic FSalinks

Editor’s Note: The article below contains spoilers for ‘The Outsiders.’

Actor Ralph Macchio is best known as Karate Kid’s Daniel LaRusso, and has spent most of his career playing the part. Before he began his role as Daniel, Macchio starred in the 1983 classic, The Outsiders, as tormented Greaser Johnny Cade. Johnny is a tragic character in every sense — a young man who has suffered domestic and peer abuse, often lamenting about the hopelessness of life, and all at such a young age. His life spirals further into despair and violence, but in spite of it all, he commits an act of heroism, for which he ultimately trades in his own life.

The wide-eyed Ralph Macchio is perfectly cast in the role of Johnny, the youthful boy with the baby face, so innocent seeming and so easily sympathized with because of it. He brilliantly balances the innocence and toughness of this tragic character, whose story arc is incredibly heartbreaking. The film propelled him and the rest of the cast to fame, and has always been one of Macchio’s most personal pieces of work.

Johnny Cade Is The Most Tragic And Sympathetic Character In ‘The Outsiders’

Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1965, The Outsiders primarily focuses on young gang member Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell), but it’s his sensitive best friend Johnny Cade (Macchio) who plays the most impactful role in the story. Johnny is the runt of the group — a small, youthful boy who is constantly getting picked on. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the film follows the lives of the boys’ underdog gang, the Greasers, who live on the “wrong side of the tracks” and are struggling to make ends meet. Their rivals are the wealthy upper class Socs, who have always had it out for them.

As a victim of abuse, Johnny carries a lot of trauma with him, as well as a switchblade wherever he goes. A violent confrontation ends with Johnny killing one of his Soc rivals, and he and Ponyboy flee for their own lives. While in hiding, they witness a church fire with children trapped inside. Johnny is a hero as he rescues the children, but suffers severe burns and a broken back in the process. He ends up succumbing to his injuries, leaving a letter to Ponyboy to say that saving the children was worth his own life. He is a true hero until the very end, and a hugely sympathetic character who never manages any sort of happiness in his short life.

Ralph Macchio Is Perfectly Cast As Johnny

Ralph Macchio wholly embodies the character of Johnny both physically and emotionally, in a star-making performance. Even though Macchio was 22 years old at the time of The Outsiders, his role as 16-year-old Johnny is a seriously believable casting choice. If anything, Macchio could’ve even passed as younger back then. Macchio has the power of boyish innocence on his side when taking on this dark material. Through his extremely youthful appearance alone, he heightens the audience’s emotional investment in the character and his devastating arc.

It’s not solely his fresh-faced looks that Macchio relies on when playing Johnny. There is a real heart to this performance, and it’s obvious that Macchio is hugely invested in this character. He takes care to pay attention to detail, using nuances in his manner to portray the depth of what Johnny is going through. Even in a simple scene where Johnny is eating a burger, Macchio is fully in character — devouring the food like he’s starving and desperate for nourishment, both physical and emotional. Macchio does not miss one opportunity in the film to fully embody Johnny Cade.

‘The Outsiders’ Was Ralph Macchio’s Big Break

The Outsiders was Ralph Macchio’s first major movie role, and propelled him to fame only a year before 1984’s Karate Kid. He had previously starred in one season of the television series Eight is Enough, but the work was nothing like what he was about to encounter when working with Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola notoriously pushed boundaries with his young cast to get the results he needed. It all began with the unconventional audition process, where, instead of seeing the actors one at a time, the director put them in a room together to watch each other audition. In the audition room, Macchio volunteered himself to read one of Johnny’s monologues, as that was the part he so desperately wanted. “Even though we lead very different lives, family lives, I sort of connected with the guy who was the one that was the protected, the smallest of the group, the sympathetic character having to defend himself and found comfort in his friends,” says Macchio. “I didn’t want him to give me anything but this part.”

Macchio was a big fan of the original S.E. Hinton novel “The Outsiders” since he had read it in middle school, so he felt the pressure to take his role as Johnny extremely seriously. While the other cast members notoriously joked around on set, Macchio kept to himself, focusing on his prep work for the film. “Maybe I could have loosened up a bit with some of the fun times,” he says. “I’m not saying I was closed in a closet and never came out ‘til the camera was ready. That’s not the case, but I certainly was not the spearhead person of the wild and crazy times.”

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He also deeply tried to understand what life was like for the character of Johnny, and actually lived on $5 per day to get a sense of his struggles. He also went as far as to sleep overnight in a park, with newspapers for blankets, to help see things from Johnny’s perspective. “But for a guy growing up in pretty-well-adjusted Long Island suburban lifestyle, it was a terrific acting exercise,” he recalls.

While the film was not exactly a huge success at the time of its initial release, it has since grown into a cult classic that has launched the careers of many famous ’80s actors, including Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, and, of course, Ralph Macchio. The Outsiders has meant so much to Macchio personally, that even as recently as 2018, he has visited schools to discuss the book with students who have read it for their curriculum. From book to film, Johnny Cade and The Outsiders have been a huge part of Ralph Macchio’s life and career. Considering The Outsiders was his first major film, Ralph Macchio certainly lucked out in landing the role of Johnny Cade. Not only is he perfectly suited to this character aesthetically, but he also put in the work to fully understand and realize Johnny as a person. While Johnny will always be a tragic character in literature and film, Macchio’s performance also brings him the depth and empathy which he so greatly deserves.

The Outsiders is currently available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

The Outsiders

Set in a small town, a group of underprivileged teenagers known as the Greasers constantly clash with the affluent Socs. The stark contrast in their socioeconomic statuses leads to a tragic chain of events, testing the bonds of friendship and the notion of loyalty among the Greasers.

Release Date

March 25, 1983

Director

Francis Ford Coppola

Runtime

91 minutes

Main Genre

Drama

Writers

Kathleen Rowell , S.E. Hinton

Studio(s)

Warner Bros. Pictures

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