Peter Bart: Tom Cruise & Rob Lowe Both Survived Turbulence On Their Flights To Stardom
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One was fiercely focused, the other accident-prone. They both made it.
The careers of Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise first collided exactly 40 years ago when the two very young but ambitious actors showed up at an Oklahoma location to assume their roles in The Outsiders, directed by Francis Coppola.
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Although thrilled by the opportunity, they didn’t exactly click: Asked to share hotel rooms, Cruise had his agent demand a single because the actor wanted to study his script each night. Lowe found another roommate for camaraderie.
On opening night, Lowe angrily discovered most of his scenes had been cut while Cruise’s had survived. It was an ominous portent because Cruise soon moved on to hits like Risky Business and Top Gun. Lowe struggled with early disappointments like Class and Masquerade.
Now circling 60, both are symbols of Hollywood success, Cruise with Top Gun: Maverick and more Mission movies and Lowe with series currently on Fox (9-1-1: Lone Star) and Netflix (Unstable). But today’s wannabe stars might be prompted to ask some serious questions about guidance and discipline.
Lowe, who proudly presents as a solid family man, has nonetheless been one of the most accident-prone stars to have survived in a cancel-prone industry. Ironically, his new comedy Unstable bowing this week is about a sensitive and loveable techie billionaire who is venerated by his employees.
This is arguably a stretch at a moment when techie billionaires are generally unloved, but the show is getting friendly notices. In one episode, when the corporate board of directors in hires a shrink to control his erratic behavior, Lowe’s character, Ellis Dragon, locks him in the basement.
Throughout his career, Lowe has consistently overcome a succession of miscues: He survived history’s worst Oscar show (remember Snow White 1989), alcoholism, a sex videotape that involved a 16-year-old girl (he’s issued many apologies), throwing up on camera amid a TV interview, warring with New York’s media community (for being part of The Brat Pack) and sullying the career of a presidential candidate. He credits those missteps for his 30-plus years of sobriety.
As such, the likable Lowe is a living symbol of resilience. ”I’m past warranty,” he cheerfully explains. “I never set out to break the rules, it just happened that way.”
To help counteract his raucous past, Lowe last year made a schmaltzy Daddy-rescues-the-dog movie for Netflix. Titled Dog Gone, even the crooks and homeless characters in the G-rated film are meticulously polite and well-groomed.
As a professional celebrity, Lowe dispenses interviews about his solid marriage of 30 years and his pride for his two sons. He also has won applause for his deftly written tell-all book, Stories I Only Tell My Friends.
The book is candid in analyzing the star’s unmemorable movies, but Lowe also expresses pride in About Last Night and St. Elmo’s Fire. Fiercely ambitious since hitting the audition circuit by age 14, Lowe worked hard to condition himself for the starring role in Footloose, but all he had to show for it was a torn meniscus.
He also struggled to master his hockey skills for Youngblood; he won the role, then winced as co-star Patrick Swayze stole the applause for his true mastery of the sport.
In his pursuit of stardom, Lowe’s friends knew that he’s always been haunted by the nightmare image of the Warren Beatty character in Shampoo – an aging lonely guy who’s run out of hot numbers.
Now a superbly fit age 60, Lowe is comfortable in his role as a creative executive producer on his father-son workplace comedy, where his real son John Owen plays his TV son. “Unstable is Rob Lowe’s world and we are all living in it,” comments John Owen.
Responds Rob: “OK, it’s my world view on steroids.”
In analyzing the career paths of Cruise and Lowe, friends and associates have struggled to account for their contrasting strategies. Both came from unstable homes and lacked much formal education. Yet both are astute showmen, albeit fueled in part by inevitable narcissistic self-involvement.
When challenged, Cruise has pursued structure and discipline in his life, as evidenced by his commitment to Scientology. As a young actor, he also embraced the counsel of the powerful CAA machine, specifically Paula Wagner, his savvy manager and later co-producer, and her husband Rick Nicita.
By contrast, Rob Lowe clung to his artistic and sometimes eccentric autonomy. While other young actors backed off from political commitments, Lowe was a stalwart defender of Jane Fonda’s causes and worked courageously for Michael Dukakis’ presidential candidacy.
Cruise and Lowe kept intersecting one another over the years but never became friends. On the dreaded Oscar night in 1989 when producer Allan Carr decreed that he needed a star to sing with Snow White, he selected Cruise for the number.
But Cruise had a quick out, having just shaved his head for Born on the Fourth of July. He also was a co-star of Rain Man, a nominated movie.
Impulsively, Carr next approached the then-25 year-old Lowe who had no singing experience and found the whole stunt misguided. But he also felt vulnerable because of the negative Brat Pack publicity linking him to Moore, Emilio Estevez and other partying young stars.
”Mistakenly I took this gig as an honor,” he said. Prior to going on camera, however, he whispered to Eileen Bowman, his co-star, “I think if we do this we should get the hell out of town.”
She did; he didn’t.
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