Love Life

by Rob Lowe

  The Battle of Long Island was a rout. Washington was defeated and after vicious, up-close, hand-to-hand fighting with Christopher’s grenadiers, his army ran for their lives. Within days, George Washington and the Continental Army had lost New York City.

  The lauded Hessians, buttressing their British paymasters, now prepared to crush the revolution in its infancy by marching directly on Philadelphia. After securing New York and its harbor, the British and Hessian forces, along with Christopher East, set up winter camp in Trenton, New Jersey.

  There are moments in time, battles in war, that change the fabric of the world. The Battle of Trenton was one. Christopher East would’ve been asleep, possibly hungover after a Christmas celebration, on December 27, 1776, when, in a Hail Mary to save America, George Washington crossed the Delaware in a sneak attack, changing the course of the war, our fledgling nation and therefore the future of the world.

  As the surprised British Army and its Hessian support tried to rally in the sleeting, frigid dawn, they were caught in a brutal, violent but short battle. Christopher, on that day, fought for his life face-to-face and elbow-to-elbow with destiny’s chosen.

  Present and fighting with the father of our country that cold morning were some of the greatest leaders America would ever know. In the blood and the gore of a street-scene battlefield that wasn’t very big at all, Christopher faced down two additional future presidents of the United States, James Madison and James Monroe; the future chief justice of the Supreme Court responsible for most of today’s constitutional law and for making the court a separate and coequal branch of government, John Marshall; and future legendary statesmen (and later mortal enemies) Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

  Christopher East was taken as a prisoner. In all likelihood, he was marched past his dying commander, von Rall, whose last words to George Washington were “Look after my men,” as was noted by Washington in his diary. About von Rall and his Hessian sons Washington marveled that rarely, if ever, had he seen such dignified bravery.

  I went to Trenton and then to the neighboring church where Christopher and a thousand of his fellows were held prisoner before the long march to Philadelphia, whose citizens lined the streets, hitting and spitting in the faces of the defeated prisoners.

  In the old church graveyard I noticed beautiful, small markers planted before a small number of weathered headstones.

  “What do those markers signify?” I asked.

  “They mark the graves of revolutionary patriots. They are markers of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution.”

  “I see,” I said, and my eyes misted. A crew was filming me and I became embarrassed by my emotion, so I turned away from the graves. A production assistant arrived with news that he had discovered a nearby Starbucks. Later, in the bustle of today’s America, I sipped my double-espresso macchiato and thought of the men back in the ground, behind the church.

  I wished Christopher had been among them. I wished he had fought with and maybe known these heroes, these early men of our country. But his destiny had placed him on the other side.

  But there was more to the story.

  One day, I received a package from one of the lead researchers on my family’s history recounting new details about Christopher’s life after being taken prisoner by George Washington’s men. After being marched through Philadelphia, Christopher was kept in the notoriously horrendous and intimidating prison at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which stands today.

  Like all Hessian prisoners of war, he was eventually offered amnesty in exchange for deserting the British Army. He took the offer and faded into the Pennsylvania farmlands. He was one of the few who chose not to return home at the war’s end. Of the thirty thousand Hessians who came to fight, only five thousand stayed. Why was Christopher among those few?

  The researcher’s package contained a photocopy of some kind of ledger from 1782 and a letter addressed to me. I examined the ledger first. Although it was faded, you could clearly see the original handwriting. It appeared to be a small list of early settlers of Donegal Township, Pennsylvania, and a ledger of taxes paid. Christopher’s name was there, along with his payment.

  I turned next to the letter. It was from the Sons of the American Revolution. It explained that the document was a record of a Revolutionary War effort supply tax to which Christopher had contributed, “serving the cause for Freedom.” As a result of walking away from the British army, choosing freedom and then contributing to its cause financially, John Christopher East was now officially a patriot of the revolution. He had come full circle, from forced combatant to actively working for the American cause. The letter went on to welcome me as a new member of the Sons of the American Revolution.

  The people I admire the most are those who have the courage, foresight and ability to see themselves with cold-eyed honesty and fundamentally change themselves. Those who, with no guarantees of greater success or happiness, find it in themselves to completely alter the course of their lives to follow what is oftentimes just a small voice telling them that they can do better. That they can be better.

  Perhaps John Christopher East perceived the greatness around him at Trenton and later throughout the new America. It must have changed him fundamentally. He gave up all he had ever known to stay in a foreign land instead of returning home. He had arrived here and been told to kill. But in the end, he fell in love. With a young country and its promise of personal freedom and, later, with a young woman named Maria and the promise of family. And like most who take the risk to follow love, the promises were rewarded. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

  I believe we’re all influenced by our epigenetic legacies. From the time I was small, I was interested in government. When my grade-school pals played kickball, I sold Kool-Aid for George McGovern. I followed the minutiae of the White House long before I worked there playing Sam Seaborn in The West Wing. When Sheryl and I built our home its elevation was inspired by Mount Vernon, although I had never seen it in person. For years before knowing this surprising story, hanging above our fireplace was an original oil portrait of . . . George Washington. Learning my family’s history filled in the gaps of why I had always been drawn to those things.

  But in spite of my early interest in politics, I had to learn to better love my country. My grandfather’s support of the Vietnam War, Nixon and the events at Kent State were a barrier to seeing America in its true totality. The worldview of my youth had to be reshaped by time, experience and travel. Like my ancestor, I was better able to see my home after crossing an ocean and spending time in foreign lands. What he saw and learned made him never return to his home. What I learned made me never want to leave mine.

  I am the son of my grandfathers. I sometimes imagine I can feel them in my blood guiding me. And even though it’s just a historical organization membership and some may think it’s silly, I’m proud to be a Son of the American Revolution. It inspires me to try to make the same choices for the same reasons that John Christopher did. For freedom and for love.

  My Grandpa and I in 1976.

  On the banks of the Delaware, which George Washington crossed in 1776 to confront my (5x) Great Grandfather.

  An Actor Prepares

  One of my favorite parts of being an actor is the preparation that goes into creating a character. There is no right way or wrong way. For the most part, every actor does it differently, although there are some universally accepted secret tricks of the trade.

  After our run together on The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin and I took his first brilliant calling card, the play A Few Good Men, to London’s West End, for its revival. I loved the movie but was really fascinated with the play it was based on, which Sorkin famously wrote on cocktail napkins while working as an usher at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. I remembered the commotion it caused when it opened with a post-Amadeus Tom Hulce in the starring role of LTJG Kaffee. Only a few other guys played the role onstage and I knew them all: Timothy Busfield, Bradley Whitford and Michael O’Keefe. Th
ey always talked about the power of the part, how, in front of a live audience, it was the kind of role that is the rarest of all, huge and demanding, onstage basically curtain to curtain, extremely dialogue-heavy, romantic, passionate and very funny (I didn’t see a ton of humor in the film version, so I was always curious about that). Aaron felt Kaffee was tailor-made for me. The London revival of A Few Good Men was booked into the West End’s most storied theater, the Royal Haymarket, home to Oscar Wilde and John Gielgud.

  Obviously, I wanted to try my hand.

  Although my first role onstage was at nine years old, I hadn’t been onstage in a decade. In the early nineties I had done a run on Broadway in a Feydeau farce, but it was an ensemble. In London, this part was the lead and the show would succeed or fail on the shoulders of its hero, the cocky naval lawyer.

  I was worried about my voice. Sorkin’s characters are notably verbose and the show was packed with monologues made famous by the movie version. I knew that every night, people would be waiting for “You can’t handle the truth!” I wanted to make sure that by show one hundred, I could still deliver. I also didn’t want to ever miss a show. Having never carried a play of this scope and pedigree, there was no guarantee. I needed to go into training. Luckily, I knew who to call: an expert I’d met years ago for a very big potential project.

  In 1991, during a matinee of my Broadway show, the stage manager told me that I had a call on the backstage phone.

  “He says it’s Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber!” he said, eyes popping out of his head.

  Andrew Lloyd Webber’s calling midperformance on a pay phone in the middle of a Feydeau farce on Broadway should have seemed like a prank, but somehow I knew it was real even before I heard his voice.

  “Hello, Rob, sorry to bother you but I’ve seen the show and I want to work with you.”

  I was hugely flattered. Being welcomed by the gatekeepers of areas that I’m not established in is always a goal of mine. I need to expand and try new things. Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted to help.

  “Have you heard of my show Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?”

  Who hadn’t? I passed its giant billboard in Times Square on the way to the theater every day.

  “I want you as Joseph for its London run.” I was honored but hesitant. Did Mr. Lloyd Webber know whether I could sing? Did he even care? Maybe he was the one person out of the billion watching who liked my duet with Snow White at the Oscars.

  “Wow! I don’t know what to say!” I said truthfully. It was a big vote of confidence from the master of the musical.

  But I knew it wasn’t the right fit for me. As much as I like to stretch and take chances, I also didn’t want to be shirtless, holding that gaudy dreamcoat four stories high on billboards everywhere. Joseph had always struck me as a little cheesy. I had another idea.

  “I hear you are making a musical of my favorite movie,” I said.

  “What movie is that?”

  “Sunset Boulevard.”

  “I am!” he said. “We are doing an investors’ showcase at Sidmonton”—his estate—“soon.”

  “Well that would be something I’d love to do,” I said. I had always thought Joe, played by William Holden, was one of the great parts in film history. If anyone could make it as good in a musical, it was Webber. It could be one for the ages.

  The second act was beginning so we agreed to talk further. Later, after a few more attempts to put me in the coat of many colors, he finally offered me the part I wanted in Sunset Boulevard. But in the end, the dates conflicted with a version of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer I was doing with Richard Eyre and Maggie Smith. And as everyone today knows, you never renege on the dowager countess from Downton Abbey. I had to pass and it killed me.

  But happily, as a result of training for the possibility of being a musical Joe Gillis, I had found a secret weapon to get my vocal cords in order. So now that I was on my way to the London stage for real, I decided to train for A Few Good Men as if it were a musical. If I could sing the show for eight performances a week, clearly I’d be able to speak it.

  I remembered that back in the eighties, my pal Belinda Carlisle, of the Go-Go’s, used a vocal coach who was a cantor at Los Angeles’s biggest synagogues by day and voice coach to lead singers by night. I made an appointment to see Cantor Nathan Lamb.

  For weeks, the cantor and I met at his temple office. He ran me through the same training that he used on his clients who had to sing to huge arenas night after night. We did scales. We did breathing drills. We worked on diction. But mostly, we worked on power. By the time I hit the Royal Haymarket stage, my speaking voice could bounce back to me from the farthest wall of the highest balcony. I was ready.

  But first, I took Sheryl and the boys on a vacation—we landed in London on the morning of July 7, 2005. Arriving at baggage claim, the exiting passengers were met with a phalanx of terse-lipped, ashen-faced airline reps.

  “The airport is on lockdown. No further flights in or out.”

  Only text messages got us the news that was breaking just miles away: London had been attacked by terrorists. Fifty-two innocent people had been blown to bits by suicide bombers. The city braced for more.

  By renting a car and driving to another airport, we eventually managed to escape London, but we returned for the first day of rehearsals two weeks later. The city was still on edge. Tourism had plummeted. Sheryl and I talked about the wisdom of moving our young family to a city so on the brink.

  “I think the main threat is over,” I told her, without any evidence to back up my theory. “We’ll be safe.”

  We moved into a beautiful flat on Eaton Terrace in Belgravia. I wanted my family comfortable while they supported me, so far from home.

  Rehearsals took place in a steamy, dusty sweatbox and I loved every minute of it. After a full day of scene work or even after a full run-through, I always wanted to stay to work more. Aaron was right there with me. Minus the pressure-cooker personality parade that was The West Wing, A Few Good Men was easy, fun, fulfilling and focused solely on making something the best it could be.

  Shortly before our opening, at our press conference in front of all of London’s media, I was asked if I ever thought of pulling out due to the 7/7 bombings.

  I told them no.

  “Look, on 9/11 and after, you guys had our backs. Now it’s our turn. I’m happy to be able to support London. I feel safe here, ’cause let’s face it, when it comes down to it, no one is tougher than the British.”

  The next day, back in our rehearsal hellhole, I was standing in my underwear doing a fitting when our stage manager approached.

  “Um, Mr. Lowe, you have a visitor.”

  Figuring it was Sheryl, I threw on a towel and headed out of the changing room.

  “Sir! You’d better put on some clothes,” he called. I noticed he was shaking.

  I put my jeans and shirt on and walked into the rehearsal hall. Some of the actors were there looking around anxiously. No one spoke. The front door opened and my visitor arrived. It was the prime minister, Tony Blair.

  He walked toward me with a smile, like we’d been friends forever.

  “Rob! What a pleasure!” he said.

  “Mr. Prime Minister!” I managed to say through my shock. I went to shake his hand, but he pulled me in close for a hug.

  “I wanted to come and thank you for what you said about our country,” he whispered. He looked at me with a sincerity that deeply touched me. I was taken aback by his gratitude and warmth. A moment later, he was gone. His visit was never made public.

  * * *

  I truly believe that anyone can be good and possibly even great acting in movies or TV. Obviously, to be consistently good requires a true actor, but with the army of people involved in making a film actor successful, even a loaf of bread could deliver a decent performance. You have multiple takes, you have directors to guide you and an editor to cut to you (or away from you) as needed. There are some actors whom editors cut
away from multiple times on the same line of dialogue! (Start looking for that, you’ll notice it more than you think.)

  Not so onstage. It’s all you. You can’t make the viewer look elsewhere when you want, you can’t take a plodding scene and sex it up with fancy cutting. You can’t hold people’s attention with anything but your own work. You have no second chances; it’s you, and only you, in the driver’s seat. It’s lonely and it’s exhilarating. Those who do it well are acting’s true professionals.

  You can’t go onstage without being functional in the craft of the theater. And besides vocal ability, the number one area to be mastered is, not surprisingly, memorization. For film acting, you can play fast and loose with memorizing. Forget a line and it may be slightly embarrassing, but everyone does it and you just do another take. Forget your lines onstage and you have a serious problem.

  I’ve been memorizing lines the same way I did when I was nine years old and appearing in local theater in Ohio. No one taught me, I had no special tips, I just did what I did through trial and error. Read the line, cover it with my hand, try to remember it, remove my hand and check my success. Pretty rudimentary, but this method got me through a lot of movies.

  But when Sorkin casually mentioned that Kaffee has as many lines as Hamlet, I figured I better step up my game. I tried a method that Allison Janney used each day on The West Wing. Supposedly she picked it up from a friend who trained at the Royal Shakespeare Company. With this new method, I had this massive part down cold within three weeks, working every day in twenty-minute blocks, four or five times a day.