George Magazine

LOWE DOWN
& DIRTY
By Lisa DePaulo
September 1999

Eleven years have passed since Rob Lowe had a little too much fun at the 1988 Democratic convention. Now he's making his comeback to stardom -- and politics -- with a hot new show, The West Wing, in which he plays a randy White House aide. Brace yourselves.

Rob Lowe is lounging in his bedroom in Santa Barbara, contemplating life, love, that unfortunate incident in Atlanta 11 years ago, and what to have for lunch.

"Lovey, just bring me something light," he says to his wife of eight years, Sheryl, who's worried that he hasn't eaten enough today. He is stretched out on a love seat, in front of their bed, a fabulous fluffed-up Martha Stewart-ish extravaganza in white. "That's Lovey," he says. "Everything great in this house is Lovey. do you mind staying in this room? I love this room."

On his side of the bed is a collection of books -- homework for his new TV series, The West Wing: George Stephanopoulos's All Too Human, Dick Morris's Behind the Oval Office. "Yeah," he cracks. "This is what Rob Lowe Takes to bed these days -- Dick Morris."

Sheryl Lowe returns with an elaborate tray of crudités, picked from her garden. Her husband gently touches her cheek. "So where were we?" says Sheryl. Oh, right. Marriage. Particularly how Sheryl ended up marrying a man known for his...uh...

"Yes?" asks Sheryl.

Broad tastes?

"What people literally say to her is, 'You married Rob Lowe? Are you on crack?"says Rob.

"That's about right," says Sheryl, laughing.

"Ellen Barkin," says Rob. "Isn't that what Ellen Barkin said to you?"

"Well," says Sheryl, "I don't remember exactly what Ellen used to say. But she was always blown away, like a lot of people, you know? Like, 'What were you thinking?'"

"Lovey!" says Rob. "You're prone to understatement today."

From the far end of the bedroom, through the French doors, overlooking a six-acre spread of stone fountains and English gardens, come the sounds of Rob and Sheryl's two little boys, playing by the pool with their nanny. Rob steps out on the balcony and leans over to tease them, shouting "Whoo-whooo!" and wiggling his ass.

Sheryl smiles. "It's a cute one, isn't it?"

A cute one? Half the Western world knows it's a cute one. Or at least the half that managed to lay its grubby paws on a bootleg copy of the Rob Lowe sex tape -- in which America's then-leading heartthrob took an ill-timed break from the serious goings-on of the 1988 Democratic National Convention to engage in a little three-way sex on video. When the tape surfaced, in May 1989 -- 10 months after the convention, and six months after Dukakis had gotten creamed in the election (like, it was gonna hurt him?) -- it was considered so newsworthy that when Lowe turned on his television, "Tiananmen Square was the second item on the news."

Today, post-Bill and Monica (and Dick and Frank and Marv and you-name-it-gate), it seems almost comical that what created such a stir was this: that the most groupied actor in the country, the Leo DiCaprio of his time, and a single guy of 24 from Dayton, Ohio, making a million bucks a movie, might, at two in the morning, after a couple dozen cocktails and God knows what else at an Atlanta nightclub, take two women up on their offer to go have three-way sex in his hotel room. Then again, he was the most valued stud of an already winded Brat Pack, whose conquests included Melissa Gilbert, Princess Stephanie of Monaco, and Oliver North's secretary, Fawn Hall. (He always did have interesting taste in women.) "It was the '80s," as Lowe puts it. "I mean, I was certainly on the wild side. But compared to Hollywood wild, I wasn't even on the chart."

But the video -- rabidly distributed for $29.95 by Screw publisher Al Goldstein, and gleefully promoted on tabloid TV -- did a number on Lowe, especially in Hollywood. Although he continued to work steadily (Bad Influence, Wayne's World,Contact, and, most recently, a wickedly funny cameo in his buddy Mike Myer's Austin Powers sequel), gone were the precious invites to A-list premieres, the Tiger Beat covers, the movie poster roles (About Last Night, St. Elmo's Fire), the star thing. Even recently, Hollywood insiders say, Atlanta cost him the role of the arrogant rich fiancé played by Billy Zane in Titanic. "Apparently, someone at Twentieth Century Fox -- all right, [chairman] Bill Mechanic -- thinks I'm a bad guy because of the video," says Lowe. "But hey, that's cool. One day, he may reconsider, and if he does there will be a surcharge. Okay, so I didn't get out of bed for a day, but I'm over it, really."

Since his ill-fated romp, Lowe has gotten sober, married, and wiser. He moved out of Los Angeles, the Sodom of his youth. He hasn't had a drink in nine years. He's aging nicely. "I think this 'pretty' stuff is finally over," says his wife. "He's a man now. He's not a boy." He chose as his bride his former makeup artist and best friend, the pathologically secure Sheryl Berkoff, a woman who knew everything there was to know about Rob Lowe and wasn't spooked a bit. They had kids. They built a breathtaking English country manor for their brood -- filled with Sheryl's collection of nineteenth-century English floral chintz china and their kids' collection of Star Wars toys. They hope that the statute of limitations on Atlanta is finally up.

Just in time for Lowe to make his return to stardom -- and politics. A decade after being publicly humiliated, Lowe has found his comeback vehicle in The West Wing, the hotly anticipated NBC drama about life in, of all places, the White House. It promises to be not a send-up of the current administration but a voyeuristic peek at the human foibles of the guys and gals who toil at the country's epicenter. "This is not Primary Colors for television," insists NBC Entertainment president Scott Sassa.

Lowe plays deputy communications director Sam Seaborn, a man who, like Lowe, is both idealistic and cynical, often underestimated, and smarter than he looks. Unlike Lowe, he's still having one-night stands with strangers. In the first episode, which airs on September 22, Sam accidentally sleeps with a prostitute -- who he thought was just a woman he had picked up in a bar -- then panics the next day that she'll leak it and he'll lose his job.

"You wanna watch it?" asks Lowe.

He walks downstairs and plucks the pilot of The West Wing from a massive wall lined with videos (no, not that one). He takes it into his den -- a clubby affair that could pass for the Purple Label section of a Ralph Lauren store -- and proceeds to close the drapes. On the table is an antique silver humidor filled with Cubans and a Baccarat bowl of M&M's. "My vices," he says. He presses a button and a huge screen drops above the fireplace, in front of the gilded mirror. "I need to sit on this side," says Lowe, who, deaf in one ear, switches places on the couch. "Are you comfortable?"

Lowe has watched the first episode of The West Wing "you don't want to know how many times," but still chuckles at the laugh lines (including his own) and gets all teary-eyed at the heart-tug scenes. "God, don't you love this show?" he asks as the final credits roll, and he offers to play it again.

Finally, a Rob Lowe video he wants you to see.

The night that Lowe remembers most from the 1988 Democratic convention began with a private, passionate interlude with Tipper Gore. Being in Atlanta, being the hot-shit celebrity guest of the Democrats (he had a front-row seat on the floor, just like Kitty Dukakis) was something of an intellectual milestone for Lowe. He had been a political junkie since he was eight, when he sold Kool-Aid on the sidewalk of his childhood home in Dayton to raise money for George McGovern. ("I could always pick the winners," he quips.) In 1984, when he was a budding Brat Packer and still a teenager, he bonded with Jane Fonda and her then-activist husband, Tom Hayden. Lowe signed on big-time, helping them lobby for Proposition 65 (California's clean-water bill), showing up with Meg Ryan to protest nuclear power plants, rallying for Central American refugees, and hopping on Jane and Tom's bus, the Star-Spangled Caravan, for a three-state get-out-the-vote drive. ("You're here because you want to see a change," an announcer said at one stop. "I'm here to see Rob Lowe!" a woman shouted back.) When Hayden invited him in 1988 to join his celebrity entourage in Atlanta, Lowe was almost as tickled as the candidate, Michael Dukakis. "He was one supportive man in '88, I'll tell ya that," says Dukakis, who fondly remembers the post-convention whistle-stop tours with Lowe. "They were the best days of the campaign."

In many ways, says Lowe, his barnstorming satiated more than just his thrill for politics. "I didn't know it then," he says, "but looking back on it? It gave some meaning to my life." He wasn't just a pretty boy who partied with Jack and Demi and Judd and Sean. He was a pretty boy with a purpose. The next Warren. "I was meeting real people across the country, you know what I'm saying? I was having interaction with them about things that made a difference in their lives."

Such was the mind-set he took with him to Atlanta. And that led to a heart-to-heart with Tipper -- and Al. Lowe was on the convention floor one night when Tipper Core cornered him. At the time, the Tennessee senator's wife was best known for her crusade to slap ratings on rock lyrics, a position that endeared her to few in Hollywood. Her husband, Al, was best known for his premature attempt months earlier to be the Democratic nominee that night. Tipper was bitter. "Tell me something," she said to Lowe. "Why is it that the people in your community didn't get behind my husband?"

"Well," replied Lowe, "it's you, frankly."

"I have to say," Lowe recalls, "it's moments like those when I appreciate why people drink. I had just the right amount. Thank God for Heineken." The two of them "were off to the races after that," conversing intensely as Al glanced across the room. "You could see," says Lowe, "that it was like a thought bubble: 'Is that my wife talking to Rob Lowe?'"

Tipper ended up winning Lowe over. "She said, 'I'm misunderstood.' She had a point. But my feeling at the time was, with all the problems in the world, she picked labeling records!"
Later that night, Lowe got invited up to the Gore suite at the Atlanta Hilton and Towers -- the same hotel where he checked into so much trouble. He ended up talking to Al till the wee hours, on the eve of Dukakis's nomination. "It was sad," says Lowe. "At one point, there was nobody around. It had gotten very quiet. And with tears in his eyes, he said, apropos of nothing, 'They wouldn't even let me speak at this convention.' I felt so bad for him. But four years later, the guy's vice president. See, this is the kind of stuff I always loved about politics."

Dragging his therapist couch around the convention floor, Lowe schmoozed with Jesse and Lloyd and Mario and Teddy, while still doing his celebrity thing -- the media interviews, the glad-handing, the autographs for Dukakis, occasionally venturing out into the 100 degree heat to visit housing projects and the Jimmy Carter Library.

He had no clue that one of his extracurricular activities would someday come back to bite him on the ass, until the following year, when he learned that one of his sexual partners in Atlanta hadn't taken her SATs yet. The dirty deed happened on the Sunday night before the convention started. Lowe flew in from Paris, went to Ted Turner's party, then repaired with the rest of the "hotties" to Atlanta's Club Rio. Many hours later, he left with the wrong two women, one of whom was 16.

That she was a teenager never occurred to him, since at the club where they met, even Rob Lowe, the movie star, was carded at the door. "And believe me," says Lowe, "these women were no shrinking violets." After Lowe passed out, his precocious sex partner and her 22-year-old lesbian lover (and co-worker at the SuperHair salon) lifted the evidence from his hotel room. Nearly a year later, the younger woman's mother filed a personal-injury suit (they later settled out of court) against Lowe. Which was how the whole escapade made its way into the public record, not to mention onto A Current Affair. Tabloid TV, then in its infancy, hit one of its first gold mines with the grainy 39-minute video -- the first celebrity "Gotcha" moment that was captured on a camcorder and peddled to the public.

Oddly enough, the portion of the tape that landed in VCRs all over America wasn't even the bit with the babes in Atlanta -- or the part with him and Tom Hayden at a Braves game -- but a previous ménage à trois Lowe had indulged in, and videotaped, in Paris. We know, we know... it was the '80s! But really, what was with the videotaping?

Lowe rolls his eyes, shrugs, and tells a story of the night he ran into Hugh Hefner, shortly after the scandal erupted. Doing a dead-on Hefner imitation, he recalls how Hef grabbed him and said, "What were you supposed to do? The technology existed."

It says something about the times -- and the man -- that when Lowe woke up the next morning in Atlanta and realized the tape from his video camera -- and $200 from his wallet -- was gone, he didn't even give it a second thought. It was an occupational hazard. He simply showered, dressed, and went back to being Michael Dukakis's top "celebrity surrogate" at the Democratic convention. "You don't know how many leather jackets I lost," says Lowe. "Petty theft" -- especially the post-coital kind -- "was part of being a movie star."

That evening, he sat riveted in his front-row seat on the convention floor, as Jimmy Carter spoke about virtue.

When the convention ended, Lowe put his career on hold for four months to stump for Dukakis until Election Day. He was such a valued member of the campaign that when he traveled with the governor and his wife, he had the seat directly behind them on the plane (the staff sat behind Lowe).

In the morning, the staff would hand him the campaign's talking points so he'd be primed for his radio interviews. He hit 12 states, drawing such huge crowds that, at one point, Dukakis said, "If things keep up this way, I'm going to have to call Lloyd Bentsen and tell him we're going to have to make Rob Lowe deputy vice president." On a campaign swing through Minnesota, Walter Mondale had Lowe to his home for dinner. ("Unfortunately," he says, "Eleanor wasn't there.") As Lowe worked the rope lines with Lloyd Bentsen, the crowd got whipped into such a frenzy (meeting Bentsen, no doubt) that the vice presidential nominee dislocated a knuckle while shaking hands.

On the night of the vice presidential debate, Lowe sat glued to the TV with Dukakis's son and two daughters and some staff in a Motel 6. "I remember us jumping up and down on this crappy bed when Bentsen told Quayle, 'You're no Jack Kennedy.' I was so pumped. It was like Kirk Gibson's Dodger home run magnified a gazillion times."

Weeks later, George Bush trounced Dukakis. Lowe watched misty-eyed as his man gave his concession speech. Afterward, he stood in the anteroom offstage with Dukakis's wife and children. "It was pretty heavy," he says. When Dukakis finished his speech, he approached Lowe. "Sorry I let you down," he said, squeezing Lowe's hand. Then he went off to hug Kitty.

The following spring, people still couldn't stop talking about what a natural Lowe was on the campaign trail. Jane Fonda gushed to Cosmo in April that Lowe was so good at charming young women that "he should run for political office someday."

In May, he went to the Cannes film festival, to screen his new movie, Bad Influence, in which he played a sociopath who videotapes a sexual encounter. While he was in Cannes, news of the lawsuit -- complete with footage -- broke in the United States. Suddenly, all his new political buddies lost his number. "I didn't call him at the time," says Dukakis. "Maybe I should have. But what do you do? What do you say?...If you talk to him, give him my best, will ya?" In fact, Rob Lowe hasn't heard from a politician since. The one overture he made -- a letter to Al Gore, expressing his sorrow after Gore's son had nearly been killed after being hit by a car -- went unanswered. "It reminds me of that great line," says Lowe. "'Jake, it's Chinatown.'"

Lowe's interest in politics ended just as abruptly. It wasn't bitterness. He had other things to deal with now. Atlanta was the wake-up call Lowe needed to get his act together. He was sick of his wastrel life and felt he was "on a decline" even before that night. "People think it started with the video. But the truth is, it started before that." The Brat Pack thing was wearing thin, the meaningless quickies even thinner. "I really came to hate, I mean hate, the screaming crazy women," says Lowe. "I was tired of people breaking into my house to steal my clothes." He was also on some level aware that the whole groupie thing had given him "a warped perspective of male-female dynamics. My computer was programmed with 'Oh, girls, right. They're the ones who stand on the street corner and show me their tits.'"

He also wasn't landing the sort of roles that would propel him beyond boy toy. "I was unhappy personally, I was unhappy professionally. I was unhappy." And he's been through enough psychotherapy since to realize that "that may be part of the reason I got myself into that situation."

"What's the old expression?" says his best friend, the actor Bill Paxton. "The road to excess leads to wisdom? Of all the people in this town who've paid for their fame, Rob was the most perseverant. He showed incredible grit. And he never stopped thinking about getting back on top."

At 26, he checked into the Sierra Tucson rehab center in Arizona, got himself sober, and never took a drink or a drug again. His recovery had a lot to do with Sheryl Berkoff, a Hollywood makeup artist who, one night in 1984, ended up in aerobic exercise with Lowe in the backseat of her black convertible. It might have ended there had Sheryl not started seriously dating, several years later, Lowe's then-best friend and fellow Brat Packer Emilio Estevez. Lowe blabbed to Estevez about that night in the black convertible, and Sheryl was so pissed she wouldn't even look at him for years. Then, just after the '88 election, Lowe showed up on the set of Bad Influence only to discover that the makeup artist hired to do his face every day was Berkoff. She immediately offered to be replaced, which stunned (and impressed) him. He told her to stay. Berkoff began to see Lowe as no woman had before: a small-town kid from Dayton who cried at Hallmark commercials in his trailer, loved little kids, and had a mother-lode of insecurities. "Tons," says Rob. "Where do you want to start?"

Both had been the product of numerous divorces. Lowe's father, Chuck, a Dayton lawyer, and his mother, Barbara Hepler, a former high school English teacher, split when Lowe was four. His mother married two more times -- as did Sheryl's, a former homemaker who is currently, as she puts it, "in a biker phase."

Sheryl grew up a "street smart L.A. chick," says her husband. Robert Hepler Lowe grew up a geek. He was a gregarious kid, but never felt accepted by the cool crowd, never quite felt like he fit in anywhere. When he was 12, his mother divorced for the second time, and moved him and his brother, Chad (also an actor), to L.A. to marry a California therapist. "I was not a happy camper," says Lowe. "I was so afraid. I wanted to stay in Dayton."

Once in L.A., things got even worse. At Santa Monica High (where his schoolmates included Sean Penn), Lowe was teased relentlessly for being a "sissy." "I showed up in Malibu in my Levi Tough Skins, which were chic in Ohio, and all the other kids were surfers and volleyball players. It wasn't a pretty picture." By 15, he was landing TV roles. But appearing in such failed television pilots as Thrills and Chills and Mean Jeans didn't make him any more popular. "If you were an actor, they called you gay," recalls Lowe. "People wanted to beat me up all the time. I went home with a lot of bloody noses. One guy would wait outside of wood-shop class for me to come out, and then he'd coldcock me. This was a fairly regular occurrence." And the girls? "I couldn't get any in high school. But you can cut me a break and say I couldn't get the ones I wanted."

A few gazillion women later, he got the one he wanted. Sheryl wasn't the typical nubile starlet he woke up next to. She was, says Lowe, "a real woman." After they patched up their feud, they became best friends -- who occasionally slept together. "I know it sounds strange," says Sheryl, "but as much as I adored Rob, and obviously was attracted to him, I wasn't in love with him. I thought he was too nice."

In fact, she'd often fix him up with her eager girlfriends, hosting dinner parties at her apartment to try to find him the right girl. "I loved that she would cook for me," says Rob. "Or she'd come to my house, and the place would be redecorated. Or the refrigerator would be stocked with something other than Wolfgang Puck's frozen pizzas and beer."

When Lowe checked into rehab, she was on a movie set in Seattle. One night, she took two planes and rented a car to get to Tucson "to spend family hour, or whatever the fuck they called it, with me. She was the best friend I'd ever had. I knew then that I couldn't live without her." They even got tattooed together.

"Just tell me something," says Rob Lowe one day, as he opens the massive mahogany door to his home. "How did I ever live my life without seeing The Manchurian Candidate? It's so un-fucking-believable!"

The night before, his buddy Dennis Miller, who calls Rob "a good hang," brought the classic political movie over to screen it with him. On another night, Lowe watched The War Room three or four times. "Carville's speech at the end and Henry Fonda's 'I'll be there' speech in The Grapes of Wrath are the two greatest speeches in the history of movies," he declares. "The War Room devastates me every time I see it. I could watch it again right now. You wanna watch it right now?"

He has clearly tapped into his inner political child today. And perhaps even his inner Rob Lowe.

"You know who I find incredibly sexy? The one woman in the world I'm frothing at the mouth to meet?"

Sheryl pokes her head into Rob's Ralph Lauren lair. "Who?" she asks.

"Mary Matalin."

She rolls her eyes.

"You know what I've come to realize?" asks Rob. "What I really loved about politics all these years is the theater of it."

"Clearly," says Sheryl Lowe.

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