Rob Lowe is probably the brat pack star who surprised us the most - impossibly Ken Doll handsome he seemed to have "short term career" stapled on his forehead, and a few flops saw him on target to achieve that goal, but he kept managing to reinvent himself: as a comedy actor in the 90s, as a TV star in the 2000s and now as a very good writer.
I'm not sure Lowe was ever a proper movie star. People thought it was, execs did, off the back of his looks and appearances in Class, The Outsiders, St Elmo's Fire and About Last Night. I'm not sure he was ever a specific draw.
Maybe that's unfair. He was in the right vehicle, like any star, but it was hard to get the vehicle. The public wouldn't go to any old thing like Oxford Blues and they wouldn't see him even in good movies like Masquerade and Bad Influence. They seemed to only really like him as a star in romances, and as a supporting actor in comedy.
Still he stuck around. Where he seems to really thrive is as a featured played in an ensemble - St Elmo's Fire, West Wing, Parks and Rec. He's marvellous with dialogue - it's a shame he doesn't do more Sorkin/Mamet.
It's been an interesting life - the book is very entertaining. Great snapshots like the making of The Outsiders. Many things I didn't know like he was friends with a French security guy who was murdered, and flew on the flight which was hijacked on Sept 11. Funny accounts of his romance with Princess Stephanie (who got her assistant to move her old boyfriend's stuff out the day after she met Lowe) and Fawn Hall, and hanging with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. Coy on Melissa Gilbert and the sex tape. Robert Wagner makes a crack to Cary Grant and co that Lowe is going to sleep with their daughters (indeed, he dated Jennifer Grant and there's a funny account of him meeting Cary). I knew he was offered the juvenile lead in Pirates but not in Dune (he turned it down)
It has its whiny actor-y moments (he seems a sook to leave The West Wing even in this account - "they left me out of the photo") and is full of all that narrative redemptive arc you see in a lot of people's personal stories in Hollywood (eg "I realised I had to be honest with myself" etc etc). But a grand read, and once again I underestimated Lowe. I'm sure he'll be relieved...
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