Michael Schoeffling is an American former actor, and male model, best known for playing Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles, Kuch in Vision Quest, and Joe in Mermaids. Schoeffling was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and raised in South Jersey. He graduated from Cherokee High School in New Jersey, and majored in Liberal Arts at Temple University in Philadelphia. In the mid-1980s he began modeling for GQ, and star photographer Bruce Weber paid for his acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Manhattan. Michael Schoeffling was found in a mall by a famous designer. An accomplished... youth and collegiate wrestler, Michael has won medals in various national and international tournaments. He won a gold medal for the United States in freestyle wrestling, as a member of the National Junior Wrestling Team in a meet held in Munich, Germany in 1978. His considerable wrestling skills were downplayed as 'Kuch' in Vision Quest, where he wrestled Matthew Modine, his teammate in the movie, and lost by fall in a wrestle off.
more