Rob Lowe has opened up about his 34 years of sobriety and revealed the "final wake-up call" that made him quit drinking for good.
The Hollywood star made his small-screen debut at the age of 15, and eventually shot to fame in 1983 as a 19-year-old teen idol in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. A string of teen films ensued, featuring a central cast of actors coined the "Brat Pack" by New York Magazine in 1985.
Lowe quickly became a Hollywood heartthrob. By the time he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe in 1987 for Square Dance, he had proved to be developing serious acting skills alongside his party boy lifestyle. Starting in the entertainment industry at such a young age meant he began drinking heavily as a teenager, which the tabloids documented in great detail.
Now, the actor's life is completely different, as he hasn't picked up a drink for more than three decades. While Lowe has said various things eventually led him to sobriety, there was one stand-out moment that resulted in him going to rehab.
Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Lowe for comment on Thursday.
That turning point occurred in 1990 when Lowe ignored his mother's call after his grandfather suffered a heart attack.
"I remember like it was yesterday: My mom telling me [on the answering machine] to 'pick up, pick up' because my grandpa had had a heart attack. I couldn't deal with it in the state I was in, and I needed to go to sleep to wake up so I could deal with it," the actor told People, saying he immediately turned to tequila.
"Who doesn't keep a bottle of [Jose] Cuervo Gold by their bedside table? That was the final wake-up call. I've been sober ever since."
That year, he joined the Sierra Tucson rehab facility in Saddlebrooke, Arizona.
Like many recovered alcoholics, Lowe's journey to sobriety involved a variety of wake-up calls. He told the publication that it was an "incremental decision" as you can't do it until you're "really ready."
One other stand-out moment in Lowe's life that slowly led him to recovery was when his sex tape was leaked in 1988. He was filmed having sex with a 22-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl he had just met in an Atlanta club.
While the age of consent in Georgia was 14 at the time—it was raised to 16 in 1995—the legal age to be involved in such a recording was 18. Lowe paid an undisclosed sum to the girl and her father and was compelled to do 20 hours of community service. Hollywood supported Lowe in that pre-MeToo era, but his career took a knock nonetheless.
"[The fallout] definitely changed my life at the time, and, in hindsight, I realized it was another step that led me to recovery and reevaluating my life," he told the publication. "But the thing that really changed me was not being able to show up for my family and myself."
In 1990, he told People: "There's no way that you can know how embarrassing it was. No matter what adjective I choose, it would be trivializing it."
Since getting sober, Lowe's career has gone from one success to another.
Although his Brat Pack years are over, he has continued to act, appearing in 1992's Wayne's World and the Austin Powers franchise. However, it was his move into TV that really saw him work with strong material again.
He spent seven years playing Sam Seaborn on the political drama series The West Wing, and five years on the Amy Poehler-helmed comedy series Parks and Recreation. His 2013 Liberace TV movie biopic, Behind the Candelabra, hinted at the dark potential of his pretty-boy star persona in the hands of a strong director like Steven Soderbergh.
In June 2020 he began hosting his podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe, where he discusses movies, TV, sports, music and culture with guests such as Conan O'Brien and Ted Danson.
From 2023 he has starred alongside his son, John Owen Lowe, in the Netflix show Unstable. In 2024 he featured in Andrew McCarthy's Brats, a Hulu documentary on the Brat Pack.
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