Rob Lowe
Lowe at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Knife Fight
Born	Robert Hepler Lowe (1964-03-17) March 17, 1964 (age 48) Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1979–present
Spouse	Sheryl Berkoff (1991–present; 2 children)

Robert Hepler "Rob" Lowe (/ˈrɒb ˈloʊ/; born March 17, 1964) is an American actor. Lowe came to prominence after appearing in films such as The Outsiders, Oxford Blues, About Last Night..., St. Elmo's Fire, and Wayne's World. On television, Lowe is known for his role as Sam Seaborn on The West Wing and his role as Senator Robert McCallister on Brothers & Sisters. He is currently a main cast member of Parks and Recreation, playing the role of Chris Traeger. Early in his career Lowe gained notoriety as a life-in-the-fast-lane playboy, ending up in the spotlight for various personal indiscretions and tabloid scandals, including one of the first "sex tape" scandals to hit Hollywood.

Early life[link]

Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, the son of Barbara Lynn (née Hepler), a teacher, and Charles Davis Lowe, a trial lawyer.^[1] His parents divorced when Lowe was young. He has a brother, actor Chad Lowe, and two half brothers. Because of a virus during infancy, he is deaf in his right ear (he later played a deaf character in Stephen King's The Stand). Lowe was baptized into the Episcopal church.^[2] His father is of German , English and Irish ancestry and his mother was of German,^[3] English, Welsh, and Scottish descent. He was raised in a "traditional midwestern setting"^[2] in Dayton, Ohio, attending Oakwood Junior High School, before moving to the Point Dume area of Malibu, California with his mother and brother.^[4][5] He attended Santa Monica High School, the same high school as fellow actors Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Sean Penn, Chris Penn, and Robert Downey, Jr.^[6][7]

Early career[link]

Lowe at the Governor's Ball party after the 1989 Academy Awards

One of Lowe's earliest roles came in the 1983 TV movie Thursday's Child, for which he received his first Golden Globe nomination for "Best Supporting Actor in a TV Movie/Miniseries". Lowe made his film debut in Schoolboy Father, followed by Class with Andrew McCarthy. His breakthrough came in 1983, when he and Emilio Estevez were cast in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. Lowe played the role of Sodapop Curtis, the brother of the main character Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell) and Darrel Curtis (Patrick Swayze). Lowe and Estevez reunited in St. Elmo's Fire, making them the two more prominent actors from the group known as the Brat Pack. About Last Night... followed, with Demi Moore (who had starred with Lowe in St. Elmo's Fire). He then received his second Golden Globe nomination for "Best Supporting Actor" for his role as the mentally disabled Rory in Square Dance (1987).

Later work[link]

Television[link]

Lowe is also known for playing Sam Seaborn in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2003. His performance in the show garnered Lowe an Emmy^[8] nomination and two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series. When the show premiered, Seaborn was considered the lead, and the pilot centered on the character. But the acclaimed cast of the show—including Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Dulé Hill, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford, Martin Sheen (whose President Bartlet was initially scripted as a small role) and Stockard Channing (whose First Lady was initially scripted as a guest role)—meant that Sam Seaborn could no longer be considered the lead character.

While he reluctantly accepted his demotion, Lowe and series creator Aaron Sorkin soon found themselves at odds over the network's meddling with the show, most notably the network demanding changes in the Sam Seaborn character. Eventually, Lowe left the series, not long before Sorkin and director/executive producer Thomas Schlamme unceremoniously quit over a dispute with NBC. During the final season of The West Wing, Lowe returned to his role of Sam Seaborn, appearing in two of the final four episodes. In 2011, Lowe appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and stated that he left the show because he did not feel he was being respected, when the other lead characters received a raise and he did not.^[9]

After leaving the show, Lowe was star and executive producer of a failed NBC drama, The Lyon's Den (2003). In 2004, he tried again in a series entitled Dr. Vegas, but it also was quickly canceled. In 2005, he starred as Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee in a London West End production of Sorkin's play A Few Good Men, the first time the two had worked together since The West Wing. Although Lowe had expressed unhappiness about his decreased role on that show at the time of his departure, he has now repeatedly said that any animosity between them is over and that he was pleased to be working once more with Sorkin, whose talents as a writer Lowe highly regards. Lowe passed on the role of Dr. Derek Shepherd of Grey's Anatomy, which eventually went to Patrick Dempsey.^[10]

Despite his two canceled TV series and flops like View From the Top and the made-for-TV movie Perfect Strangers during his post–West Wing run, Lowe found success in the TV miniseries genre. 2004 marked his return to this genre; he had appeared in 1994's The Stand, based on Stephen King's book of the same name. In 2004, Lowe starred in the TNT remake of the Stephen King miniseries Salem's Lot which was the highest rated cable program of that summer and the highest ratings TNT original programming had at the time. In 2005, Lowe starred in the miniseries Beach Girls on the Lifetime network, based on the Luanne Rice novel of the same name. The series premiere received the highest ratings for a movie premiere in Lifetime history. In that same year, Lowe filmed his critically acclaimed role as super movie agent in the 2006 independent film Thank You for Smoking. In 2006, he filmed The Perfect Day for TNT, in which he took a pay cut to film in New Orleans in order to help the hurricane ravaged area. That same year, Lowe filmed Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming, the "sequel" to the 1999 Kevin Bacon thriller Stir of Echoes.

In 2006, it was announced that Lowe would join the cast of Brothers & Sisters for a guest run of several episodes. In January 2007, ABC announced that Lowe would be staying on Brothers and Sisters as a "special guest star" for the rest of season 1 after Lowe's initial appearance on the show in November 2006 brought the best ratings and demographic showing for the show since its premiere. Soon after ABC announced an early season 2 renewal for Brother & Sisters in March 2007, Lowe announced he would be returning for the show's second season. He continued to appear in the series until the end of the 2009–2010 season. Unhappy with the stories and his lack of screen time in the fourth season, Lowe announced he would leave. In an episode broadcast on May 16, 2010, his character was part of a multi-vehicle crash involving a large truck and was put into a coma, the storyline was wrapped up in the first episode of the fifth season; Lowe did not appear in the episode.

In June 2006, he was the guest host for an episode in the third series of The Friday Night Project for the United Kingdom's Channel 4.

Lowe has also appeared in a televised advertisement for 'Visit California', along with other celebrities including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. (In the advertisement campaign, he was usually pictured in a white tee-shirt printed with the California state flag.)

Lowe had a supporting role in the 2009 movie The Invention of Lying and a leading role in Too Late to Say Goodbye.

In 2010, he appeared in the biography of the Brat Packers called: Brat Pack: Where Are They Now? He also appeared on The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien.

Lowe is currently teaming up with 44 Blue to produce a reality series entitled Potomac Fever about young adults living in Washington, DC.^[11]

In July 2010, it was announced that Lowe would be providing the voice for the superhero Captain Marvel in the upcoming animated series, Young Justice.^[12] It was also announced in July 2010 that Lowe would become a series regular on the series Parks and Recreation.^[13]

In 2011, Lowe guest starred in a recurring role on Showtime's comedy Californication. Lowe featured as the troubled but in-demand actor Eddie Nero - a character based upon "about ten people", according to Lowe^[14] but somewhat contradicted by sources at Showtime itself^[15] - employed to portray Hank in a film version his book, Fucking and Punching.^[16]

Other work[link]

In 2011, Lowe wrote a memoir titled Stories I Only Tell My Friends, which was released in May 2011.^[11][17] During Lowe’s promotional tour for Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Lowe told Australian radio show The Kyle & Jackie O Show that during his 5-day press visit to Australia in 1990, he was so badly affected by the overuse of pain-killers that the only two things he remembers from the trip was being at the Sydney Zoo and getting a tattoo.^[18]

Personal life[link]

Lowe with wife Sheryl Berkoff in 2003

Rob Lowe is a fan of the NFL football team the Indianapolis Colts.^[19] On January 18, 2012 Lowe erroneously reported via Twitter that NFL quarterback Peyton Manning was retiring.^[20]

Family and relationships[link]

Lowe, a little-known actor at the time, and Little House on the Prairie actress Melissa Gilbert briefly met at age 14 in 1978 in the halls of the CBS Television Studios. In 1981, when both were 17, she spotted Lowe stopped at the red light next to her car and the two began dating.^[21] The relationship was rocky and fraught with infidelity. During the filming of 1984's The Hotel New Hampshire, Lowe began an affair with Nastassja Kinski. In Gilbert's 2009 autobiography, Prairie Tale: A Memoir, she talks about sleeping with Lowe's then-best friend, John Cusack, while Lowe was away filming. According to Gilbert, she caught Lowe in Kinski's hotel room and then slept with Cusack out of revenge. Lowe broke up with Gilbert in 1986 when he began dating Princess Stéphanie of Monaco, but when the relationship with the princess ended, Gilbert and Lowe reunited. The two quickly got engaged and were to be married in the summer of 1987. But when Gilbert informed Lowe that she was pregnant, he broke up with her for good. She miscarried only days later.^[22]

Lowe married makeup artist Sheryl Berkoff in July 1991; they have two sons: Edward Matthew Lowe (b. Sept 24, 1993), and John Owen Lowe (b. Nov 6, 1995).^{[citation needed]} They live in Venice Beach, California.

Sex tape controversy[link]

In 1988, Lowe was involved in a sex scandal over a videotape of him having sex with two women, one of whom was 16 and the other being 22. She was filmed with Lowe during the night before the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Lowe has asserted that he did not know that the second girl was underage, and it was confirmed that the two had met at a bar.^[23] At the time, Lowe was campaigning for Michael Dukakis.^[24]