Rob Lowe

Robert Hepler Lowe (born March 17, 1964) is an American actor, filmmaker, and entertainment host. Following numerous television roles in the early 1980s, he came to prominence as a teen idol and member of the Brat Pack with starring roles in The Outsiders (1983), Class (1983), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Oxford Blues (1984), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), About Last Night... (1986), and Masquerade (1988). Lowe was involved in a sex tape scandal in 1988, which stymied his career for many years afterward. His notable credits during this time were supporting roles in comedy films such as Wayne's World (1992), Tommy Boy (1995), and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999).

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 (1999–2003), 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 (2006–2010), Chris Traeger on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation (2010–2015), and as Captain Owen Strand on the Fox drama 9-1-1: Lone Star (2020–2025). In 2018, he made his directorial debut with the television film The Bad Seed, a remake of the 1956 film of the same name.

Robert Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, to Barbara (née Hepler), a teacher, and Charles 'Chuck' Davis Lowe, a trial lawyer. While still a baby, he lost complete hearing in his right ear as a result of undiagnosed mumps. His parents divorced when Lowe and his younger brother Chad were young. Lowe was baptized in 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, served as a Hessian soldier during the U.S. War of Independence. His ancestor served 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 a POW, his ancestor was given a choice, and took the option to stay in the United States. He has two half brothers from the second marriages of his parents, the producer Micah Dyer (maternal) and Justin Lowe (paternal).

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." On a March 25, 2019, episode of the ‘WTF!? With Marc Maron’ podcast, Lowe boasted that he was once capable of bench pressing 135 pounds as a senior member of Santa Monica High School's baseball team, which has become a reoccurring punchline on his ‘Literally’ podcast.

Lowe got his first professional acting role in 1976 when he was 12 and still living in Dayton. He played an errand boy in a production of Sherlock Holmes at the Wright State University summer theater. He landed the part by calling every local theater and asking each if there was a part for a child in a play. Lowe was paid $150 for the role. In 1979, Lowe landed the part of Tony Flanagan in the short-lived television comedy A New Kind of Family. One of Lowe's earliest roles came in the 1983 television 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, however, was as Sodapop Curtis in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 cinematic adaptation of S. E. Hinton's novel, The Outsiders, where he shared the screen with an ensemble cast that included Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Leif Garrett, C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze. Next 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 (who had starred alongside 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).

In August 1987, he performed on stage, playing Baron Tusenbach in Chekov's The Three Sisters at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. In 1993, while filming a British TV production of the Tennessee Williams play Suddenly, Last Summer with Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson, he recalled in an interview that he had run into Paul Newman four years earlier at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and that Newman had encouraged him to continue to work in theatre. In 1989, as part of the opening ceremony for the (critically derided) telecast of the 61st Academy Awards produced by Allan Carr, Lowe made his musical debut singing a reworked duet of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" alongside actress Eileen Bowman, who was dressed as an unauthorized depiction of Snow White. Lowe appeared in 1992's Wayne's World and 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 (and briefly in 2006). His performance in the show garnered Lowe a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and two Golden Globe 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.