Rob Lowe Remembers Being Young and Famous in the ’80s

Rob Lowe was Hollywood’s newest heartthrob when he met Jodie Foster at the Park Lane Hotel so she could interview him for this magazine’s May 1984 cover story. Lowe, who was 20 at the time, was riding high from his breakout role in The Outsiders the year before, while he and Foster were coming down from the overwhelming experience of shooting their drama The Hotel New Hampshire. “We did the interview and then went to a club called Area,” says the 59-year-old actor today. “If I had to look back on not only the year, but the month and the week and the day, it was probably the most fun time of my life.” 

 

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“I mean, does it get any better than that sentence?”

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“Kathy Valentine is the bassist who was my first good friend in the band, and Gina would be Gina Schock, the drummer. I was definitely happy to be the male mascot of the Go-Go’s.” 

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“That was a very, very, emotionally intense shoot. There were multiple alliances, friendships, love affairs, breakups, and then it was over. I’m glad Jodie felt that way too, because otherwise I would’ve thought I was crazy. I had a very hard time letting go of that experience, and even though we haven’t seen each other in years, Jodie feels like she’s my sister.” 

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“It’s absolutely true. It’s that moment in a young man’s life, where it’s the first seedlings of what it’s like to be in an adult relationship, but you’re really still just a teenager, and you have those oversized, outsized feelings, many of which are new and feel unique to you. You haven’t realized that this, too, shall pass. That was this moment that I was having during the making of this movie.”

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“Oh my god, that is amazing. I love that I had the guilelessness to let myself be quoted like that. I look back on that kid and go, ‘Good for you, kid. Admirable lack of pretension and a ten out of ten on honesty.’”

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“I don’t know if young actors on the rise today have that same sort of camaraderie, but that’s what it was like if you rolled into London or Paris or Chicago or New York. It was like, ‘Yo, which of the homies is around?’ Now when I run into Tom, it’s like we’re brothers, man. We graduated together.”

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“You’re 20 years old. You’re about to be legal. You’re about to be drinking. You’re about to go into the real world. Things are about to get real. I can feel that as I look back on these quotes. What I’m hearing is angst about growing up.”

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“I think what I was saying was the comedies that I’d been in, to the extent that I’d even been in any, were not the best projects. There were so many guys fighting over who’s going to be the next New York Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman wannabe, and I always felt that I was sort of a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body, and a comedic one at that.”

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“The pinnacle of New York City nightlife in the ’80s was that night at that place. I think De Niro was there. All the Outsiders were there. The Go-Go’s were there. Jodie was there. Warhol was there. In those days, clubs were completely democratic. You’d have street artists, drug dealers, society women. You’d have bridge-and-tunnel teenagers trying to fight their way in. It was anybody and everybody. Coke was still good for you, we thought. That’s what ‘successful people’ did. AIDS didn’t exist. It was a moment that was about to end.”

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“That’s exactly what my son said before he went into recovery. ‘I get straight A’s from Stanford and I party hard on the weekends.’ My thing was, ‘I fucking kick ass in movies and then I party when I’m not doing them.’ Then by 26 I was in recovery. There were other actors out there who didn’t chase the fun like I did, and there’s a part of me that wonders what my life would have been like if I’d been an all-work-and-no-play type. But I went down swinging. I didn’t get cheated on anything life had to offer in those days, and as I hear myself talk, I don’t regret any of it.”

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“It was definitely a long way from Malibu, where I ended up.”

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“That makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, because it’s all fine and good for a 20-year-old to say, ‘When I get married, it’ll last forever,’ but, and I don’t want to jinx it, I’m going on 33 years with my wife. The notion that I could articulate that at 20 kind of astounds me.”

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“I just want to take that little boy and go, ‘It’s going to be okay.’”

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“I eat at every McDonald’s around the world. By the way, the notion of me at the laundromat doing my own laundry is really funny. I remember those days. Boy, do I remember those days.”

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Hair: Addie Markowitz using 18.21 Man Made and Kevin Murphy

Makeup: Anny Kim using La Mer and Dior

Photography Assistant: Cesca Coppola

Fashion Assistant: Megan King

Production Coordinator: Alaura Wong