- I didn't go to college.
I was gonna go but then I got The Outsiders.
Am I gonna do The Outsiders with Francis Ford Coppola
or am I gonna go to freshman year at UCLA, USC?
I think I chose okay.
Hi, I'm Rob Lowe, and this is the timeline of my career.
[jazzy music]
[upbeat music]
My first big job, I was 15, I had a David Cassidy hairdo.
Although, my brother Chad likes to say that
my hairdo looked more like Karen Carpenter's.
It's a look.
I had my first girlfriend and in the summers,
I would have to go back to Ohio to visit my dad
'cause my parents were divorced.
I had to go away for the summer and I was so heartbroken.
My agents called and they were like,
"Yeah, there's an audition if you wanna
"pay your own fare and fly back for it."
"Yes, I'll do it!"
I could've cared less.
The only real reason I came back
is 'cause I wanted to see the girl.
Well, I got it.
I learned a lot about comedy from Eileen Brennan,
who played my mom, and she was just coming off of
Private Benjamin, where she was nominated for an Oscar.
We shot a bunch of shows and weren't on the air.
Then all of a sudden, we were on the air
and did our next show and when I came out,
the girls screamed in the audience.
We'd been on the air one week.
And I thought, "Wait a minute, I'm still the dweeb
"that couldn't get a date in high school."
That's the power of entertainment.
It was a horrible bomb.
There were 62 shows on television.
You're lookin' at number 62, dead last.
And the network's big fix, literally you turn it on
one Friday and there was this new family living there.
It didn't work.
But here's the good news: the daughter?
Janet Jackson, Miss Jackson if you're nasty.
- Super-what? - All brawn, no brains.
- Darry, have you seen my DX shirt somewhere?
- No. - Hey,
you gotta wear pants, too, buddy.
I think there's a law or somethin' bout that.
- How 'bout my jeans?
I was still new enough that
I didn't realize how unique it was.
Coppola had all of the actors auditioning
come at the same time to a soundstage that he had bought
and we would all sit on the floor
and we would play characters and then he would send one down
and have somebody come up and change characters
and we all watched each other.
And then it went on like this, 12 hours a day, for days.
I don't know if the best actors got the parts,
but I will tell you that for sure
the most competitive and the toughest ones did.
Kill or be killed.
When we got the movie, there was a ton of prep.
Francis would create a world for us,
he would have us go and sleep overnight
for nights with these greaser families.
So, it's me and Tom Cruise in a guest bedroom
in some bad area of Tulsa, Oklahoma
with some people who are high school delinquents.
Francis wanted to toughen us up
so he had us play tackle football on the asphalt
with, like, the local gang o' thugs.
Tommy Howell, being the sophisticated one of all of us,
and he was all of 13, huddled us up, and he says,
"I don't know about you but I'm outta here.
"If I break my leg on this play,
"they'll have somebody else playing Ponyboy tomorrow."
And we'd sorta boycotted it and walked off. [laughs]
[upbeat rock music]
Endless, endless, endless training for the rumble.
That was my first time learning a stunt
and we had the great Buddy Joe Hooker,
probably the first iconic stuntman.
Each one of us got to sort of choreograph
our own version of the fight
that we would work on relentlessly.
The day we went to shoot it,
was a massive, torrential rainstorm.
Francis said, "I'll just shoot in the rain."
And then the rain stopped, so for the next week,
we had to bring in fake rain.
God, just those nights under that rain and that mud.
I mean, it wasn't Apocalypse Now
but it was as close as we were gonna get.
Every seventh grader in the country,
pretty much, is required to read the book.
And, of course, they see the movie.
So every year, I get 13 year olds who lose their mind.
That is an amazing gift as an actor.
I'll always kinda be frozen in time.
It's really special, I have to say.
[upbeat rock music] [shouting]
You know what it is?
It's St. Elmo's fire, electric flashes of light
that appear in dark skies outta nowhere.
[fire whooshing]
To be barely 21, being able to
make movies with people you loved,
and the movies were about us hanging out,
so all we did was hang out.
The part I played was the part of Billy.
I know a good part when I read one,
but they didn't want me for that part,
they wanted me to play the straight,
square part that Judd Nelson played.
'Cause they didn't think I was edgy enough.
So I spent the next 20 years of my life proving them wrong.
I showed up for my meeting with Joel Shumacher
with, like, a six-pack of beer and he was like,
"Oh, this guy's edgy enough."
And I, I got that part.
That's not a, an easy speech, it's so earnest.
And also, the meaning of St. Elmo's fire is all wacky.
Sailors would guide entire journeys by it.
Sailors thought it was the things
that appeared on the masts of ships but it's not,
it's the things that appear in the, it's like, augh.
But I think I did it okay.
They made it up because they thought they needed it
to keep 'em going when things got tough.
Those movies still have a meaning,
which I'm shocked at, really.
Something like Stranger Things, for example, and you go,
"Oh, yeah, that's, that's based on
"my character from St. Elmo's Fire."
[upbeat saxophone music]
The year that that came out,
I remember going out for Halloween
and seeing multiple people dressed as my character.
Weird and awesome!
By the way, the only reason I knew it were my character
is they had a saxophone around their necks and a bad wig.
I followed Clarence Clemons around, from the E Street Band.
Usually it's worn right here but mine's worn like a guitar
and I can throw it over my back, it's a guitar strap.
It's hilarious, it's so good.
Yeah, the sax scene's my favorite.
I can fake-play the sax to this day.
I'm better at fake-doing everything.
- Welcome to Club Sprockets, Etienne.
- Thank you, Dieter.
If you'da told me that I would host
Saturday Night Live one day, I'd be like, "Get outta."
It was the highlight
and, frankly, remains.
One of the greatest compliments I ever got
was from Mike Myers who said that I shoulda been
a Not Ready for Prime Time Player, me and Alec Baldwin,
and I would have loved that.
Lorne likes to describe hosting it as being,
it's like being shot out of a cannon.
I mean, the adrenaline when they announce you
and you come out and it's that iconic stage
and they're playing that iconic opening music.
In terms of rushes, I don't know if I've ever topped that.
The real collaboration I had was with Mike Myers.
He was either gonna do a Wayne's World sketch or Sprockets.
And I was like, "I'm not a big Wayne's World fan."
Little did I know.
And I played Etienne, the pansexual choreographer.
It was heaven.
Mike and I had such a good time
that when he wrote Wayne's World,
he wrote me into it purely because of that.
I know that I may be wasting my time
but here I am with the contract
and two cashier's checks for five thousand dollars each.
Mike and Dana had never been in a movie.
They didn't know where to stand in front of a camera.
I'm not kidding.
And Paramount was like, "Yeah, whatever, sure, Lorne.
"Here's some chump change, go make your little whatever."
And I sat in a screening and Bohemian Rhapsody came on
and when they started moving their heads
like this, the place went ballistic.
["Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen]
- Like I've never seen before.
And I remember looking at Mike and they were
looking at each other and going, "Holy shit."
And literally the rest was history.
Benjamin was a really, really fun character for me to do
and started my mini-career as a good looking comic dick.
I was just so excited to be allowed to be funny.
And then as it grew into Tommy Boy and Austin Powers,
it was a chance to use a muscle
that I hadn't had a chance to.
I mean, About Last Night and St. Elmo's Fire
have comedy in them, but they're not comedy comedies,
so it was, it was pretty fun.
Yeah, you're fired.
[ominous music]
You guys, come on, can you believe
John Smith is getting married tomorrow?
I'm uncredited in Tommy Boy and the first Austin.
Well, you know he works as a henchman for Dr. Evil.
'Cause that's literally a cameo in the very first Austin.
I think it's only in the extended DVD cut.
Mike and I, as I said, were friends
and we were playing golf one day.
I grew up with Robert Wagner, I knew his daughters,
and we started talking about RJ, as he was called,
and I imitated him and Mike lost his mind.
We laughed about it and that was it.
And six months later, he sent me
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and there I am,
in the script, Young Number 2, played by Rob Lowe.
First of all, Dr. Evil's my favorite
character in cinema history.
The globe that was there, when we were screwin' around,
I would dribble it like a basketball
and it got me thinking and I went to Mike
and I said, "Hey Mike, do you remember The Great Santini?"
And Mike's a cinemaphile like me
and that's a great movie with Robert Duvall.
He was a bastard father and he's
making his son play basketball.
- I bet you're gonna cry.
C'mon, momma's boy.
Let's see you cry, come on, squirt it some, come on, cry.
- And I was like, "We should do The Great Santini
"where you throw the ball off my head."
We only did it once, we did it in one take
as an ad lib and it made it into the movie.
- Huh, you gonna cry?
- No, I'm not gonna cry. - You gonna cry?
- Oh, what are you-- - Huh, huh?
Are you gonna squirt some? - I don't really think
I'm gonna, oh-- - You gonna cry, huh, huh?
[sobbing]
Yeah, see?
You gonna cry, huh?
You're a big man now, huh?
Yeah, thought so.
- There's a woman over there, I think she's lookin' at me.
- Really? - I dunno.
I never know if they're lookin' or not.
When I read the title, West Wing, I thought it was
a sequel to the Pensacola: Wings of Gold.
No idea what the hell it was.
I never really had this in my career, ever.
I was like, "Oh, I'm this guy."
That's all fine and good for me to feel that way.
The question is what does everybody else think.
And I vaguely knew the name Aaron Sorkin.
Aaron, to this day, has you come in and read
'cause his writing's very specific
and you can either do it or you can't.
They offered me the part in the parking lot.
I clearly had a connection that.
I had a conversation with a very famous actor
who was maybe going to do Newsroom.
"Do you have to say everything that he?"
I'm like, "Yeah."
"But so wait, so like, I can't, like,
"you know, like, make it my own?"
I'm like, "Dude, you're not making it your own."
"What, why would I ever wanna do that?"
I'm like, "Because the beauty of it is the math.
"Being able to be in the orchestra
"and to know your place, to play your notes."
I remember the audition, like, I knew it cold,
comma, letter perfect.
I mean, Aaron's just a guy who writes great stuff.
I do think, though, coming offa that comedy run I was on
got me the part.
It was the very first scene in the pilot
and when I was done, everybody laughed
and Aaron turned to the network and said,
"I told you this scene was funny."
It was a unwritten rule of show business.
You do not do a show about politics.
Only because Aaron wrote such a good script
did they even consider it and even then,
it sat literally on a desk until Scott Sassa,
the then-president of NBC, goes,
"Yeah, I'll give it a shot."
Now, there are 10 political shows on every single network.
Remember that it is not the DNC
but rather your tax dollars that pay my salary,
so I work for you, whether you voted for us or not.
My body has no fat to protect itself from disease,
things happen very quickly.
Listen to me, it's very important
that you replenish my body with electrolytes
after every involuntary loss of bodily fluids.
- Oh boy. - So there was a notion
that they were gonna add a character
to 30 Rock, my favorite show ever,
and that I would be a nemesis to Alec.
And I don't think it was ever a real conversation
but it sparked the network saying, "I don't know about that
"but would Rob ever consider going on Parks and Recreation?"
It was a total shotgun marriage.
I met Mike Schur, Mike met me,
and it was literally a blind date.
Literally, see, I said it.
And I remember Amy just happened to walk in.
You know, it was a love fest from the minute, from go.
Mike, understandably, didn't know if it was gonna fit
and, frankly, neither did I, so we kind of agreed
that we would do a six episode trial.
But, because Amy was pregnant, it was really
this convoluted schedule where it's really crazy.
We decided really, really early
that it was great and we all wanted to do it.
And I remember the day that it happened.
We were doing an episode that's called the Flu Episode
where he gets very, very sick
and he looks in the mirror and says, "Stop pooping."
And that's an ad lib.
And when I looked in the mirror and ad libbed that,
I think Mike Schur was like, "We're keepin' him."
That staff was insane.
It's like the 1927 New York Yankees' Murderers' Row.
Everybody on the show is a steroided
version of who they actually are.
I do have a little bit of energy and I am kind of optimistic
and I am kind of enthusiastic and they just mainlined it.
So much so that, season's end of playing Chris, I was like,
"I wonder if there's just other layers to Chris."
Nope, there's none.
That Chris could be excited about the most mundane,
boring thing, it just was a well that never ran dry.
But now, I am infected
wit the killer virus and I feel fine.
Therapy.
- Now I've gotta go back home and I don't know
what I'm supposed to do with myself.
- Maybe you're doing it here.
The thought of going to Africa
and shooting a movie legitimately
in the wilds of Africa with real wild animals,
they're not trained, they're not being told what to do.
"Do you wanna shoot a movie in Africa?"
"Don't even need to read it, yes, in."
Because you know it's gonna be an adventure.
And I love Kristin Davis.
First of all, she looks exactly the same.
She's beautiful and is nice and wonderful
and she's just a, just a great person.
If I didn't have her there,
I don't know what I would've done
because it's such a specific life, living in Africa,
giving your whole life to elephants
and living in a tent and.
Unlike the West Wing, where I've lived part of that life,
there's no iteration of me that's ever lived that.
She was invaluable to me.
I'm outdoors almost every minute of every day
that I can be outdoors, I love being outdoors,
and to be there in that kinda majesty
and to be making a movie there, it was surreal.
And it's the kinda things that you know
you're not gonna get a chance to do
maybe ever again in your life.
I ran as fast as I could from that dust cloud.
20 years later, it's finally catchin' up to me.
[solemn piano music]
Pack your things, we're gettin' outta town.
I remember turning on my TV and seeing this show Nip/Tuck
and seeing this character, Dr. Christian Troy,
and turning to my wife and going,
"Why can't I have a character like that?
"That's what I should be playing."
And I had a meeting with Ryan and I told him about
how much I loved Dr. Christian Troy and he was getting
whiter and whiter and whiter as I was talking.
And I finally said, "What's wrong?"
He goes, "Don't you know I wrote it for you?"
He wrote it for me and my agents never gave it to me.
So since that day, we've been trying to
figure out how to work together.
And this is the good news: I've had a show
on the air every season since 1999.
Finally, I was available when he wanted to
do a new iteration of his 9-1-1 franchise.
It's big, it's massive, it's gritty,
it's a great part, great cast, Liv Tyler.
I feel like I'm part of a big train.
I play a firefighter who's obsessed
with his hair, his skin care regimen.
That's such a, like, a Brad Falchuk,
Ryan Murphy, Tim Minnear kind of thing.
They have a weird secret sauce
and it's that kinda bizarre, like, you're not quite sure
how they actually get away with it.
That's the brand and they've done it and it's really fun.
- Hey, go back, go back!
[dramatic music]
- I'm grateful that I'm able to do both,
that I can have shows on the air
that are out and out comedies, like Parks, and do,
you know, Lone Star, which is out and out action/drama.
Even the mistakes or the things that
don't turn out the way, maybe, you want to,
inevitably lead you into something bigger and better.
And that's been my experience not only
professionally, but personally.
I'm glad because I've always had
a sense of purpose about my life.
I'm really fortunate.