“I love important birthdays because they are an opportunity to reflect and think about where you want to go,” Rob Lowe confessed a few days ago in an interview with People magazine. The question referred to Sunday, March 17, when the actor, a sex-symbol in the eighties, turns 60. “I have never felt better,” he admitted.
Lowe faces this new decade with enviable physical shape, thanks to sport. But without a doubt the elixir of youth and stability has come from more than 30 years of happy marriage to Sheryl Berkoff (62). And also his two sons: Mattew Edward (30), a marketing expert businessman, and John Owen (28), actor and screenwriter with whom he works on the comedy Unstable (Netflix), which after the success of the first season, has already the second one has started to be filmed.
The small screen has been where the actor has achieved his successes, since the new century began with titles such as Five Brothers, Californication, Parks and Recreation, The Grinder and especially with the acclaimed The West Wing of the White House. And currently, in addition to Unstable, he has the fifth season of the police drama 9-1-1 Lone Star pending.
Rob Lowe maintains his good fortune, personally and professionally, although due to a sexual scandal and his addictions he was on the verge of losing everything.
He was born in Charlottesville (Virginia) and knew from a very young age that he wanted to be an actor. At the age of 12 he had already participated in 30 plays. It was then that his parents separated and he moved with his mother and his younger brother, Chad, to Malibu. In 1983, luck put him in the path of Francis Ford Coppola, who signed him to star in his film Rebels alongside other future stars such as Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Maccio and Matt Dillon.
That rise to fame (Youngblood, Hotel New Hampshire, St. Elmo punt de trobada or Teach me to dance) made him an idol, and he let himself be loved: Melissa Gilbert, Wynona Ryder, Nastassja Kinski and Estefanía de Mónaco were some of his couples, including Jane Fonda, 26 years his senior. But at the same time that his success was raising him, his addiction to drugs and alcohol was bringing him down. Until 1988 when he hit rock bottom when some sexual videos of him with a minor were leaked.
It was in an Atlanta hotel where Lowe, who was 24 years old, had relations with two women, ages 22 and 16, and they recorded themselves. Later, while he was in the shower, the two women fled with the video and another of the actor and a friend with a woman in Paris. After its public disclosure, Hollywood vetoed his career and although they reached an out-of-court agreement, the court sentenced him to 20 hours of community service.
“I was stupid and I didn't make money with it like everyone else does now,” the actor said in a recent interview. But that scandal “is the best thing that happened to me. Honestly, I think so, because it helped me overcome my alcoholism and sobriety allowed me to get married,” the actor recalled years later. In 1990 he began dating Sheryl Berkoff, a makeup artist for the film he was filming in Bad Influences, and they have been together ever since. However, in 2008 he was once again the protagonist of other lawsuits. Two nannies and a cook accused him of sexual harassment, but the actor accused them of defamation and the matter was never heard in court.
But that's a thing of the past and now on the occasion of turning 60, Rob Lowe confesses to People magazine: "I feel like I'm starting a completely different chapter of my life."
