The brat who came back
In this revealing interview, scandalous former teen idol Rob Lowe tells Chrissy Iley about the clear-eyed happiness he has found in his work and, most importantly, his family life.
Rob Lowe’s arm is covered in thick blood. Shocking. Or it would be if it was real. We are on set with Code Black where he plays Colonel Willis, a soldier doctor. He’s in army fatigues and short back and sides haircut, but with the same glittering cornflower-blue eyes that stared out of so many film posters in the Brat Pack era. We’re on the Disney lot, taking a break for lunch.
The fake blood was from filming a scene where he was taking out a guy’s clavicle after an explosion. “Just a little medical heroics before lunch,” Rob says. “Actors are often asked to play heroes. I find this show gratifying and fun because these heroes exist. These guys are saving lives every day.”
He orders a cheeseburger without the bun and salad. “I like to eat clean,” he says. We share some char-grilled Brussel sprouts because Rob’s lunch order sounded so boring. “I have so much more energy if I eat clean,” he says. “I’m in the middle of 30 consecutive days without a break. I shoot this show weekdays and then travel to Boston to work on a movie at the weekend, along with a speaking tour – in the past five years, I’ve done everything from talking about cancer research and advocacy, because my family has a history there [his grandmother and great-grandmother both battled breast cancer and his father is a non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor]. And I also talk about recovery from alcohol and drugs. The movie is the sequel to Super Troopers, which was a huge comedy cult film.”
Last month, Comedy Central screened Roast Of Rob Lowe. Why would anyone put themselves up for humiliation like that? “It was a badge of honour,” Rob says. “I watched the Dean Martin roast when I was a kid. Muhammad Ali and Paul Newman. All the cool people of that era did them. They had asked me to do it a number of times and I’d refused, only to see Justin Bieber and James Franco do it, so I figured if those guys can take it, I can. I love a good hard joke and I don’t care whose expense it’s at, including my own. As long as it was smart, funny, it didn’t really matter to me, in fact, the better I liked it.”
Peyton Manning, Jimmy Carr and various others took part in the roast. Nothing was off limits. They mocked his pretty boy looks and constantly brought up his 1988 sex tape scandal with a 16-year-old with lines like “Rob defies age …restrictions”. They said he looked like a Ken doll, “… plastic and something that’s always close to a teenage girl”.
“My experience was it was exactly what I thought it would be,” Rob says. “Really fun, like hosting Saturday Night Live on steroids. It’s adrenaline. It’s fight or flight. You sit there and take it all night, and then it’s up to you. You go there and deliver.”
The way the roast is set up is that luminaries, friends and “frenemies” of the “roastee” say terrible things about him and he has to wait until they’re finished before he gets to defend himself. “The worst was waiting for my opportunity to respond,” Rob says. “That was hard. After the fourth person, I was ready to swing back.” His wife, Sheryl, and sons Matthew, 23, and John Owen, 21, were all there. Did they want him to do it?
“My sons are smart, cool guys.
They said, ‘Dad, you have to do it.’ I asked my wife and she said, ‘I don’t think you should do it’, and then she said, ‘How much money are they paying you?’ I told her and she said, ‘Okay, definitely do it.’” He grins.
Rob met Sheryl more than 26 years ago when she was a make-up artist working with him on set. She now designs high-end jewellery.
For years, people have been commenting on Rob’s perfect skin. He’s 52, but could pass for 32 and he now has his own skincare range, Profile. “I’ve been working on it a long time,” he says. “I built it myself. It makes me proud, but it’s tremendous hard work. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
What a lovely opportunity to study his gorgeous, chiselled face. Its perfect jaw line. There are no jowly bits and he’s almost unlined, no bags, no puffiness. “A lot of it’s genetics,” he says. “A lot of it’s taking care of myself and discipline.” Rob’s face lights up when he uses the word discipline. He thrives on hard work and mental clarity. “I’ve met people in their 80s, but their spirit is young and it makes them look young. I’ve met people in their 30s whose spirits are so old they seem old before their time. A huge part of it is your outlook on life.
Being able to prioritise and not be confused about what’s important. That’s a big thing.”
Does he mean having a clear mind not befuddled with alcohol or drugs? “That, for me, has been so long, I can barely remember not having a clear mind,” he says. “It’s about having a clear sense about what you want that makes life much easier.” Has he always had that? “No. But I always knew I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid. I never had that thing that people don’t know what to do with their lives.”
The food arrives and he tucks in. “My character [in Code Black] is a military medic, a trauma doctor. Everybody else works for the Los Angeles County Hospital. In this particular episode, I’m back in the field, hence I’m in my fatigues.”
When he had to play the Pope in You, Me And The Apocalypse, he read the Bible from cover to cover. What research did he do to play a trauma doctor? “Oh, we have one on the show advising us, but I researched it as well,” he says. “There’s a lot of reading about medicine. I have friends who are in service and you can go to medical bootcamp. They have that here. After lunch, I have a fake torso in my dressing room I practise on.
I’ll be doing sutures on that.
“That’s what I love about this show. It feels real. When they asked me to come on for this season, I was struck with its authenticity. It’s not BS. These people aren’t banging in the closet of the hospital every day.”
He doesn’t get to bang anybody? “Not yet, but there’s time …” he jokes. “It’s the authenticity of the detailing I love so much. And I’m working with Marcia Gay Harden. She’s got an Oscar, so the calibre of acting is high.”
Rob does not have an Oscar, even though, in my head, he got one for playing Dr Jack Startz in Behind The Candelabra, Liberace’s (Michael Douglas) cosmetic surgeon. The prosthetics he wore were in themselves a work of art. He was nominated for a Golden Globe, but lost to Jon Voight. “I’ve never done anything that got more reaction from my peers than that,” he says.
Dr Jack Startz was part of the reinvention of Rob Lowe. It showcased his talent as a comedic actor, which he honed brilliantly for Parks And Recreation (with Amy Poehler) and The Grinder (about an actor playing a lawyer whose role gets cancelled, so he decides he can work in a law firm). For Rob, Dr Jack Startz was a stand-out. “I would proudly put it up with The West Wing in terms of my work.” The West Wing. A landmark television series set in the White House. And Rob was right there as Press Secretary Sam Seaborn. Aaron Sorkin’s words coming out of Rob Lowe’s mouth. Brilliance. There are always rumours of a revival. “Until Aaron Sorkin decides to do it, we don’t know. The West Wing was about him,” Rob says.
At one point, there was talk of
Rob taking on a political career.
He has a keen political eye and is super articulate, but he’s less enthralled with politics than he used to be.
“You make a difference when you do things that are valued as art,” he says. “Entertainment that’s valued, stories that aren’t debasing and are smart.”
Rob has grown into the smart scripts, but he started off struggling to find meaningful roles because his face was so beautiful. He emerged in the ’80s in the “Brat Pack” scene with The Outsiders, St Elmo’s Fire and About Last Night … Does he ever see his old brat-packers Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Robert Downey Jnr? “I don’t. I live in Santa Barbara and work so hard and so often. If I’m not
on set, I’m at home with my family, resting and living life. I’m never on the scene.”
Do his boys still live at home? “They don’t. My youngest, Johnny, is at Stanford and wants to be an actor. He had a role in The Grinder and also worked in the writer’s room, and he’s working on something called The Nick. My other son, Matthew, just started at law school.”
Sitting with Rob, you can’t help but feel high on his energy, his clarity, his drive. He’s been 26 years sober and he takes on his sobriety the way other people might take on a party – with relish. He’s excited, too, when he speaks about his wife, Sheryl, rare in a 25-year marriage.
“Sheryl and I have been married for 25 and been together for 28 years; it comes down to picking the right partner,” he says. “Most people don’t pick the right one. It’s that simple. Because as the years go on you’d better be simpatico, whether it’s about your beliefs on travel or child-raising. Then you’d better be legitimately attracted to them. There’s a lot of boxes to tick and it’s hard to find someone that ticks all those boxes.” Did he know that in the beginning? “A little bit. I knew she was my best friend and if I had one seat on a plane going into space I’d want her to be on it with me. I didn’t know how we’d feel about raising kids together, but we were on the same page.
“Little things can be huge. I didn’t want my kids to go to a school where you could skateboard in hallways, wear shorts and call teachers by first names. I wanted uniforms. I wanted old-fashioned academics and they turned out well from it. They did well by the discipline. My kids get enough exposure to the arts at home. At school, I’m not interested in that for them.”
Discipline is a passion in Rob’s life. That wasn’t always the case? “It still isn’t, you have to let your ‘id’ out,” he says. “You have to.” He comes to the party, after all? “No, no, no. Mine comes out in adrenaline sports.” He does a lot of surfing. “Bigger waves each year. If I had it my way I’d really train and do some legitimate big wave surfing. Sheryl doesn’t like me doing it very much. I try to be as careful as I can, but it’s one of those things, like motorcycles, which I also have.” The blue glittering eyes go extra glittery.
“I got one when I was 48,” he says. “Total midlife crisis moment.” Couldn’t he just have a glass of wine? “That’s the one thing I can’t do. The only thing I can’t do.”
Rob has written – with graphic and hilarious detail – all about his alcohol and drug addiction in his memoirs, Stories I Only Tell My Friends and Love Life. It was cathartic. “I meet people every day who have read the books and it always moves me,” he says. “I didn’t know people would care or what they’d think of it. I was just doing it. It has to be something really personal and then the rest of it is up to the universe. That people responded was an amazing experience.” He has incredible recall for someone who was out of it all the time. “I wasn’t out of it all the time,” he says. What about a trip to Sydney – where he said the only thing he remembered was going to the zoo. “I remember meeting Michael Hutchence and INXS the first night. That writes its own narrative, doesn’t it? Then there was the zoo and a tattoo parlour.”
I lift up the sleeve of his T-shirt to see the tattoo. “It was a little koi fish. Really tiny,” he says. “I’d be like, ‘Here is my tattoo’, and there was this dainty little thing. When I got sober, I needed my own wildness, so I got a bigger tattoo because I’m gonna show them I’m still a bad-arse.” If you peer closely, you see a tiny fish in green swirling waves. Is he sure he didn’t have some other girl’s name and had the waves scrolled over it so Sheryl wouldn’t see? “No, she was with me,” Rob says. “That was at the beginning of our courtship. I remember what’s worth remembering.”
I order espresso after lunch. Rob declines. “I have about 12 a day,” he says. “Coffee is the last man standing for me. I’ve gotta have something, right?”
He tells me, “There was a great white shark attack on my surf beach a few weeks ago where a guy got eaten. I worry about sharks when I go spear fishing with my son. You go in the ocean with a weight belt to keep you down, fins and a snorkel. You dive with a spear gun and shoot whatever there is to shoot. I love it. My son had a tiger shark charge him in Hawaii. He was lucky.”
Does that scare him? “I respect it.” Perhaps fear has replaced alcohol as a vehicle to an altered state for Rob.
If he could edit his life what would he change? “Nothing,” he says, “That’s the best you could hope for.”
It comes down to picking the right person.