Rob Lowe Biography
Early life
Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia to Charles Lowe, a lawyer, and Barbara Hepler, a teacher; the two divorced when Lowe was young and have since re-married.
He has a brother, actor Chad Lowe, and two step-siblings. Lowe was baptized into the
Episcopalian church, though his maternal grandparents were Methodists. He was raised in a "traditional midwestern setting" in Dayton, Ohio and on
the Westside of Los Angeles, attending Santa Monica High School, where one of his classmates was fellow Brat-Packer Emilio Estevez. He was
voted "most spirited" in high school.
Career
Lowe's early roles included such hit films as The Outsiders (where
he played Sodapop), St. Elmo's Fire, and About Last Night. Lowe was one of the most popular members of the Brat Pack, partially because of his good looks, which made him a popular actor with many.
Lowe is perhaps best known for playing Sam Seaborn in the television series The West Wing from 1999-2003. 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,
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 - a move which saw the show's style change greatly, resulting in decreased ratings and mostly negative reactions from
critics and fans. During the final season of The West Wing, Lowe returned to his role of Sam Seaborn, appearing in
two of the final four episodes.
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 cancelled. Also during 2004, Lowe participated in a photo
shoot by the renowned fashion photographer Ben Fink Shapiro. 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 Shepard of Grey's Anatomy, which eventually went to Patrick Dempsey.
Despite his two cancelled 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 since 1994's The Stand which was 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 Summer Girls on the Lifetime network which was based on the Lunann
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 Dead Speak,
the "sequel" to the 1998 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 series premiere. Soon after ABC announnced an early season 2 renewal
for "Brother Sisters" in March 2007, Lowe announced he would be returning for the show's second season which is due to premiere
in the fall of 2007.
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.
Sex tape controversy
In 1988, Lowe was involved in a sex scandal over a videotape of him having
sex with two females, one of whom was sixteen, in Atlanta while attending the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Lowe has asserted that he did not know that the second girl
was underaged, and it was confirmed that the two had met at a bar, which the girl entered by lying about her age.
Further complicating the issue was another part of the same tape that leaked
at the time, showed Lowe, a young American model called "Jennifer", and "Justin Morris" having a menage-a-trois in a hotel
room in Paris. This part of the original tape was made commercially available and was sold as one of the first commercially
available "celebrity sex tapes", lending a black eye towards Rob Lowe's public image.
Lowe's career was damaged by the scandal, and he later entered a rehabilitation
clinic for alcohol and sex addiction. Eventually,
his career rebounded and Lowe mocked his own behavior during two post-scandal appearances as host of Saturday Night Live.
Personal life
Lowe makes his home with his wife Sheryl Berkoff and two children, Edward
Matthew Lowe (b. 1993) and John Owen Lowe (b. 1995), in Montecito, California.
Lowe was the first male spokesperson for the 2000 Lee
National Denim Day fundraiser which raises millions of dollars for breast cancer research and education.
His grandmother and great-grandmother both suffered from breast cancer, and his mother
succumbed to the disease in late 2003.
Lowe is a founder of the Homeowner's Defense Fund, a Santa Barbara County non-profit,
non-partisan organization dedicated to local control of land use planning and transparency in government. The average price
of tract homes in Santa Barbara in early 2006 is $1,100,000, which has motivated some to propose denser housing on existing
lots. At the same time Lowe opposes new housing for others, he has sought to build a 14,260 square-foot mansion for himself
on an empty lot in Montecit,
California. Lowe's protest over the appearance
of the address of the empty lot in the Santa Barbara News-Press precipitated a mass
resignation of senior employees at that newspaper on July 6, 2006, and was a proximate cause of the Santa
Barbara News-Press controversy. Lowe is a registered Democrat.
Selected filmography
