An entertaining memoir of a serious thespian trapped in the body of a teen idol
Rob Lowe understands if you have a hard time taking him seriously. Looking back in his upbeat and quite entertaining memoir, he has a hard time, too — a serious thespian trapped in the body of a teen idol, a kid who makes up for his geekiness big-time once killer chin and ice-blue eyes begin to announce themselves to any number of gorgeous women, on and off-set. At one point, co-hosting a fundraiser in Canada with Princess Stephanie of Monaco — with whom he has been carrying on a month-long affair — he approaches Gregory Peck, Robert Wagner, Cary Grant, and Prince Rainier to thank them for a wonderful evening. As he leaves, he hears Wagner mutter, “Ya know, guys, I think that kid’s banged every one of our daughters.” He has, though he’s gentleman enough to leave out the sordid details.
Lowe’s accentuating-the-positive means we get only the bare minimum on the videotaped sex scandal with a pair of women, one underage, during the 1988 presidential campaign (lifelong Democrat Lowe was stumping for Michael Dukakis). But Stories I Only Tell My Friends hardly skimps on dirt, as when the author dishes on his “fairly friendly but simmering rivalry” with Michael J. Fox, with whom he butts heads by “debating whose movie themes were better”: John Parr’s “Man in Motion,” from St. Elmo’s Fire, or Huey Lewis & the News’s “The Power of Love.” “Hey, Teen Wolf, what time is it?” asks Lowe, to which Fox shoots back, “Screw off! You’ve made seven movies. My last one [Back to the Future] made more than all of yours combined!”
Lowe isn’t always a sparkling stylist, but he’s sharp, aware, and — deliberate omissions to the side — unself-important about his work and his time in rehab during 1990 for excessive drinking. “[B]eing in treatment lets my real self emerge,” he writes. “But first, it will have to gradually strangle the good-looking, successful, charming poster-boy pod person that stunted its growth many years ago.” Looks like he did a good job of it.