Biography of Rob Lowe

Robert Hepler Lowe (known as Rob Lowe) is an American actor, producer, and director. He made his acting debut at the age of 15 with ABC's short-lived sitcom A New Kind of Family. Following numerous television roles in the early 1980s. He came to prominence as a teen idol and member of the Brat Pack with roles in films. Like The Outsiders , Class , The Hotel New Hampshire , Oxford Blues , St. Elmo's Fire , About Last Night... , and Square Dance . The success of these films established him as a Hollywood star.

Following a 1988 sex tape scandal, Lowe's public image and film career declined. By the turn of the millennium, his career saw a resurgence when he ventured back into television, making his breakthrough as Sam Seaborn on the NBC political drama The West Wing , for which he received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. His other television roles include Robert McCallister on the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters , Chris Traeger on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation , Ethan Willis on the CBS medical drama Code Black , and the Fox drama 9-1-1: Lone Star as Owen Strand. In 2018, he made his directorial debut with the television film The Bad Seed, a remake of the 1956 film of the same name.

Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, to Barbara, a teacher, and Chuck Lowe, a trial lawyer. His parents divorced when Lowe and his younger brother Chad were young. Lowe was baptized into the Episcopal church. He is of German, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry. On the show Who Do You Think You Are?, Lowe found out that one of his ancestors, Christopher East, was a Hessian soldier. His ancestor was fighting under the command of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall and was captured at the American victory at Trenton, New Jersey, on the morning of December 26, 1776. As an American POW, his ancestor was given a choice, and took the option to stay in the United States.

Lowe grew up in Dayton, Ohio, in a "traditional American setting." He attended Oakwood Junior High School before moving to the Point Dume area of Malibu, California, with his mother and brother. In California, he attended Santa Monica High School, where he met Charlie Sheen. In his autobiography Stories I Only Tell My Friends, he wrote regarding Sheen, "We were both nerds he wanted to be a baseball player."

One of Lowe's earliest roles came in the 1983 TV film Thursday's Child, for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film. He also appeared in the music video for The Go-Go's song, "Turn to You." His breakthrough role was his big-screen debut 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 and Darrel Curtis . In 1984, he starred opposite Jodie Foster in Tony Richardson's The Hotel New Hampshire. 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 . He then received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the mentally disabled Rory in Square Dance . In August 1987 he performed on stage, playing Baron Tusenbach in Chekov's The Three Sisters at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. He recalled meeting Paul Newman there, and that the older actor encouraged him to work in the theatre in 1993 when filming a British TV production of the Tennessee Williams play Suddenly, Last Summer with Dame Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson.

Lowe had appeared in 1994's The Stand, based on Stephen King's book of the same name.

He played Sam Seaborn in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2003 . His performance in the show garnered Lowe a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and two Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series. Lowe was drawn to the role because of his personal love of politics, and his longstanding friendship with Martin Sheen, who was cast as President Josiah Bartlet.

When the show premiered, Lowe was considered the lead, and the pilot centered on his character. But as the acclaimed cast of the showâ€”including Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, DulÃ© Hill, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford, Martin Sheen and Stockard Channing â€” were all well-known actors, eventually Lowe's character was no longer the showâ€™s main focus. 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 Loweâ€™s character. Eventually, Lowe left the series, not long before Sorkin and director/executive producer Thomas Schlamme unceremoniously quit over a dispute with NBC.

Lowe passed on the role of Derek Shepherd of Grey's Anatomy, which eventually went to Patrick Dempsey.

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. 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, he starred as Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee in Sorkinâ€™s London West End production of 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.

That same year, 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. Later, Lowe filmed his supporting role as a movie agent in the 2006 independent film Thank You for Smoking.

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 2009â€“10 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.

Lowe has been married to makeup artist Sheryl Berkoff since 1991. They met on a blind date in 1983, and again on the set of Lowe's movie Bad Influence. The couple have two sons: Matthew Edward Lowe and John Owen Lowe .