Rob Lowe

Early life

He lost hearing in his right ear as a baby due to undiagnosed mumps. His parents divorced when he and his younger brother Chad were young. Lowe was baptized in the Episcopal Church and has German, English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry. On Who Do You Think You Are?, he learned that an ancestor, Christopher East, served as a Hessian soldier under Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall and was captured at the American victory at Trenton on December 26, 1776, choosing to stay in the United States.

He has two half brothers from his parents' second marriages: producer Micah Dyer and Justin Lowe. Lowe grew up in Dayton, Ohio, attended Oakwood Junior High School, then moved to Malibu, California, with his mother and brother. He attended Santa Monica High School, where he met Charlie Sheen. In his autobiography, he described them both as nerds.

On a 2019 podcast, he said he could bench press 135 pounds as a senior on the baseball team, a recurring joke on his Literally podcast.

Career

Lowe's first professional acting role came in 1976 at age 12, playing an errand boy in a production of Sherlock Holmes at Wright State University summer theater, for which he was paid $150. In 1979, he landed the part of Tony Flanagan on the short-lived comedy A New Kind of Family. He received his first Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 television film Thursday's Child. He starred in The Hotel New Hampshire (1984) with Jodie Foster and Oxford Blues (1984) with Ally Sheedy. He reunited with Emilio Estevez in St. Elmo's Fire (1985) and starred with Demi Moore in About Last Night... (1986). He earned a second Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Square Dance (1987).

Personal life

Lowe has been married to former makeup artist Sheryl Berkoff since 1991; she works as an interior designer and founder of Sheryl Lowe Jewelry. They met on a blind date in 1983 and again on the set of Bad Influence. They have two sons: Matthew Edward (born 1993) and John Owen (born 1995). Lowe is a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Rams.

In 1988, at age 24, he was involved in a sex scandal over a videotape of him having sex with two females, one 22 and the other 16. They met at Club Rio in Atlanta the night before the 1988 Democratic National Convention. The age of consent in Georgia was 14 at the time, but 18 was the legal age to be involved in such a recording. Lowe was campaigning for Michael Dukakis.

His career later rebounded, and he mocked his own behavior on Saturday Night Live. Lowe began drinking heavily as a teenager. In 1990, two years after the scandal, he quit drinking and completed an alcohol rehabilitation program, maintaining sobriety since. He adopted daily Transcendental Meditation, saying it changed his life.

In April 2008, Lowe filed lawsuits against three former employees for breach of contract, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, accusing an ex-nanny of spreading malicious lies, another of falsely claiming a relationship and harassment, and a former chef of theft and making statements about his wife.

Philanthropy

Lowe became the first male spokesperson for the 2000 Lee National Denim Day fundraiser, which supports breast cancer research and education. His grandmother and great-grandmother both had the disease, and his mother died from it in late 2003. He co-founded the Homeowner's Defense Fund, a Santa Barbara County nonprofit focused on local land-use control and government transparency. In 2006, his complaint about the publication of his vacant lot's address in the Santa Barbara News-Press caused a mass resignation of senior staff on July 6.