Stories I Only Tell My Friends

by Rob Lowe

  The movie I’m making is called The Finest Hour. The end product won’t be mine. In the early, heady, euphoric, I-don’t-give-a-fuck, my-life’s-been-saved days of my early recovery, I’m happy to let the chips fall where they may. I wanted to play this character, a tough Navy SEAL, and to experience that world.

  I trained with the SEALs at BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) in Coronado (in fact, I broke a rib on the hellish obstacle course). I spent hours training underwater, learning to scuba dive, being thrown into the ocean with my hands and feet bound and trying to stay afloat, and practicing “ring pickups,” in which a passing Zodiac yanks you out of the water as you swim to the surface. I became a marksman with an MP5 automatic and learned to hold my breath for two minutes and twenty seconds while swimming underwater. I did daily open-ocean swims in full fatigues and boots, and carrying a backpack. I had the time of my life.

  But when Sheryl and I landed in Israel to shoot, it all went to hell. The film’s producer was the notorious and infamous Menahem Golan. Known for making the occasional rare gem among a lifelong oeuvre of cheap schlok, Golan had recently been on a roll with his company, Cannon Films. He would now overpay to attract legit talent (Dustin Hoffman was doing a movie for Cannon until Golan took out an ad welcoming him to the “Cannon Family” before his deal was done, at which point Dusty bailed) and then make the films for as little money as possible. Hence, this movie about the American military was being shot in Israel.

  We butted heads on day one. I had absorbed the pride and professionalism of the heroes I had trained with among the SEALs and wasn’t going to let cost or expediency keep me from portraying them in the correct light. So when they didn’t want to provide the authentic (and probably expensive) weapons that real SEALs carried, I balked. I finally had to purchase and ship the MP5s, rather than use the Israeli-made Galil, which would have made me a laughingstock among “the Teams.”

  In spite of the movie having a ton of action, as one would reasonably expect from a movie about underwater commandos, Mr. Golan did not want to pay for a stunt coordinator or stuntmen. Instead, some of the cast who had been SEALs worked with former Israeli commandos to set up and execute the stunts. Swelled with new, sober exuberance as well as a high level of testosterone from my intensive training, I thought, no problem, I’ll just do my own stunts. It would almost cost me my life.

  After my AA meeting, Sheryl is applying my camo makeup, which now, after weeks of wearing it, has made my skin painfully raw. “Be careful out there,” she says as we are jostled by the heaving PT boat that serves as our shooting location.

  We are miles off the coast of a horrible, bustling port on the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere near the city of Haifa, to shoot the climax of the movie. I will be hanging off the back of a burning, speeding patrol boat, being dragged facedown in the boat’s wake, struggling to free my foot, which is tangled in a rope. As I struggle not to drown, I will reach up, hack myself free with my KA-BAR (knife), fall into the boat’s massive wake at full speed, and be shot out through the foamy turbulence to safety. One of the former SEALs does a test run and it all goes to plan, so I take my place as cameras roll. I notice Sheryl has left her perch on the front deck; she doesn’t want to watch.

  I’m wearing a cable under my fatigues that attaches me to the racing, lurching boat. After I’m dragged for a few seconds, I will “cut” the rope, and the cable will release, throwing me into the wake.

  Of course the Cannon budget prevents the use of nontoxic (but probably expensive) “bee” smoke, so rubber ties are burned instead, as smoke blankets the boat. Choking, I lower myself backwards and go headfirst into the wake. I’m submerged to the waist and buffeted so hard that the buttons on my top are immediately ripped off. I never hear them yell action.

  I struggle to breathe and not dislocate an arm as I’m dragged at full speed. When the director has enough footage, he releases the cable. With a snap, I am violently sucked into the wake, tumbling head over heels, again and again, like being in a washing machine. Unlike during the test run, I’m not being spit out of the back; in fact, I’m now drowning for real.

  I hear an awful thudding noise as I continue to tumble out of control. I realize it’s the sound of my head hitting the hull of the boat. And now I can also begin to feel the sensation of being sucked underneath, toward its massive propellers. When I hear a muffled, high-pitched whir, I know I’m going in. I have a last thought: Maybe all this gear I’m wearing will give me some protection from the blades.

  And then I’m hit. The force almost knocks me out with its violence. Everything goes black. When the cobwebs clear, I’m choking on seawater, floating behind the patrol boat, finally free of its prop wash. Seeing that I was headed to the propeller, one of the former SEALs had jumped into the wash, bear-hugging me in protection as we headed toward the blades. Miraculously, his added weight was enough to knock me out of the vortex.

  After I’m hauled back onto the boat, Sheryl goes nuclear. “You are done shooting today. Fuck these assholes and their incompetence. I’m taking you home.” The director wants no part of Sheryl and calls a wrap. I thank the SEAL for saving my life.

  A few days later, I try to return the favor of gallantry on the set when the producers attempt to force a young actress to take off her top during a scene. It’s totally uncalled for, completely gratuitous, and the girl is scared that if she doesn’t show her tits, she’ll be fired. I take her aside. “Put your top on, and keep it on. If anyone makes a peep, send ’em to me, tell ’em I said no one takes their clothes off on this movie.” Soon Menahem Golan is storming around the set, but the scene is cut.

  “Menahem, is everything okay?” I ask.

  “No! Everything is terrible! I come to set to see nipple and I see nothing!”

  It’s no surprise to me when the underfunded The Finest Hour bombs. But I don’t care. After spending my entire life single-mindedly drilling down for success as an actor, I’m less and less interested in the Hollywood program. With a new perspective from sobriety and a new, meaningful relationship, it’s harder and harder to care about my latest review or box office. I want what I’ve never had. A normal life. And so, after spending the eighties working on a career, I will spend the nineties working on my life.

  * * *

  Sheryl won’t move in with me. She has a house of her own, works hard to pay for it, and values her independence. So we divide time between our places. I’m coming up on a year sober, after daily recovery meetings and once-a-week men’s group-therapy sessions (which I love). I’ve never been happier, and when someone points out that “Sheryl is someone you want in your foxhole; she’d jump in front of a bus for you,” the words hit a nerve. And so, on June 20, 1991, I ask her to marry me, parked up on Mulholland Drive, before the magnificent Los Angeles skyline. Sheryl says yes.

  I knew my fiancée was a go-getter, but nothing prepared me for what happened next. Like for most guys, the mere act of proposing was a herculean feat that I thought would keep me in my gal’s good graces for months, and maybe even years, to come. But no. Within twenty minutes of arriving home from Mulholland, Sheryl has gotten me to name a date—and the date is only one month away!

  Her logic is this: If you are engaged, then it’s just a sham unless you mean it. And if you mean it, you should have no issue with setting a date. Can’t argue that. And the quick turnaround on the wedding day?

  “Rob, if we wait, every Tom, Dick, and Harry will come out of the woodwork to talk us out of it. The naysayers, the fearmongers. The press will weigh in, you name it, and everyone will want their two cents’ worth. This is about us, no one else. What’s the worst thing that can happen? If it doesn’t work out? I’ll always be your friend!” she says.

  And so we make a secret plan. We will be married in four weeks on July 22 in an intimate and under-the-radar affair.

  My mother goes ape. She has all kinds of ideas in her head about Sheryl’s agenda, as do a number of my friends. (Twenty years of marriage and two almost
grown sons later, I’m sad to say that these folks’ concerns had more to do with their own agendas than my or Sheryl’s well-being.) Although Mom will eventually calm down, Sheryl and I remove the “Does anyone object to this union?” portion of the vows, just in case of a mutiny.

  We tell the thirty guests that they are going to a wedding-themed charity lunch, so they will dress appropriately, won’t be thrown by the decor, and will have no idea what’s happening until we lock the doors. Friends of ours have provided their beautiful home in Hancock Park, overlooking the historic golf course. Even the catering staff thinks it’s a charity lunch. As a result, the press never got to sell one issue on our backs. I always roll my eyes when celebrities wail about their privacy being invaded by the media. If you are willing to make certain choices and live in a particular way, you can live a mostly normal life. But many stars would go insane without the attention, so they won’t do what needs to be done to stay out of the spotlight.

  On the big day, I’m fixing my tie, late for the ceremony, when the phone rings. It’s Lorne Michaels. “Rob, I need you to come to dinner tonight with the studio to talk about the ‘Wayne’s World’ movie,” he says. Both he and Mike Myers had not forgotten my good show for them and want a “real movie actor” in what would be both Mike’s and Dana Carvey’s first film.

  “Geez, Lorne. I can’t make it,” I say.

  “Rob, it’s a very important dinner.”

  “Um, Lorne, I’m walking out the door to get married.”

  “Then I guess even dessert is out of the question?” says Lorne, dryly.

  I rush to Hancock Park. The wedding goes without a hitch. Sheryl and I say our vows in front of our semistunned friends and family, including Steve Tisch, Garry Marshall, and Emilio. Sheryl is breathtaking in her gown, and I feel like, together, we will blaze a new trail of love, hope, and possibility. I’m not sure that everyone else is down with this program, and that’s okay by me. Hollywood has always had its share of bullshit marriages and, like my sobriety, only time will tell if ours will last. But as we have our first dance to John Barry’s gorgeous Out of Africa theme, I’m hoping that Sheryl and I can beat the odds.

  CHAPTER 18

  Never look a grizzly bear in the face, don’t stare at the sun, and never, ever, look Dana Carvey in the eyes during a comedy sketch. There are a number of world-class comedy killers in Hollywood, but Carvey is without question the top assassin. Even during his tenure at SNL, when he was surrounded by what was probably the show’s best cast ever, his superiority was acknowledged with a nickname: the Lady. Dana will do anything and everything to make you laugh, like they said about the Terminator: “You can’t stop him! That’s all he does!”

  Now I’m doing a scene from Wayne’s World on stage 14 at Paramount. I try to manipulate Garth (played by Dana) into turning on Wayne as he works in a basement on a mechanical hand. With each take, Dana tries a new way to get me to laugh. His eyes are demented.

  I’m fairly well known for my ability to stand in the fire and not break character, but Carvey is rising to the challenge. My palms stream rivulets of sweat, my heart is pounding, but I’m not letting this maniac in his blonde wig take me down. I’m a rock. By take fifteen, Carvey has worked his way through ad-libs, faces, and baby noises. Now, from nowhere, he produces a cartoonlike mallet and smashes the robot hand to bits. It’s hilarious.

  My chest heaves like when you want to weep but bite your tongue not to. I stare at him, still stone-faced. It feels like an eternity before the director calls “cut.” Then, I die laughing. Carvey winks.

  Sheryl and I cut short our Cabo San Lucas honeymoon when my Wayne’s World deal closed. Shooting was to begin right away. Now over a year into sobriety, I have gone through tremendous changes. The two most marked have brought me to this movie. I’ve learned to only concern myself with my end of any transaction. I do the best job I can and then let the results be what they will. I am out of the people-pleasing business. So I don’t handicap the potential of a movie about two guys in bad wigs who have never acted, based on a three-minute comedy sketch directed by a punk rocker who’s never made a hit film. It feels right somehow, so I say yes, and that’s that.

  But I’ve also learned to confront people when I’m being taken advantage of, to enforce boundaries, when in the past I either had none or let people encroach upon them while I stuck my head in the sand. This will prove great for growth and maturity, and not so great in show business, which thrives on actors being distracted, checked out, and fearful.

  So when Paramount wants to pay me less than half the fee I’ve worked over a decade to establish, I say no, and head to Cabo with my wife. But just before we walk out the door, Sheryl (who has a fantastic business mind) says, “Tell them you’ll take half your fee up front and half as a back-end payment, like the producers.”

  It’s a brilliant compromise. And Paramount says yes. This will be the only back-end deal that will ever pay in my thirty-plus-year career.

  Wayne’s World also brings me closer to a group of people who will be friends, confidants, mentors, and collaborators for the next decade: Lorne Michaels, Mike Myers, and their manager, the legend Bernie Brillstein, whom I sign with as well.

  “I remember the first time I saw you, Bernie,” I tell him at our first meeting. “I was fourteen years old and you were with John Belushi at The Tonight Show.”

  “I remember when I first saw you, kid! You were with Fawn Hall at Jack Lemmon’s AFI award. I thought, that kid is so cool. What balls!” says Bernie, who not only will help me navigate the next fifteen years of my career, but will become a second father as well.

  Wayne’s World is a hit. Mike Myers’s vision is universally accepted into the rare category of smash comedy and timeless classic. Even today, it brings me a new crop of young fans every year. Thanks, Lorne. Thanks, Mike.

  * * *

  One of my great thrills was having a big movie in the theaters and my Broadway debut simultaneously. Living with Sheryl in a penthouse at the Regency, being driven past the lines for Wayne’s World to the stage door for A Little Hotel on the Side at the Belasco Theatre, I was living an actor’s ultimate dream. I didn’t become an actor to get famous. I didn’t become an actor to get rich. I was too young and unsophisticated to really understand that these things were even an option; I just wanted to do what I loved. And now I was doing it at the highest levels in the two areas I most valued.

  I also felt a sense of peace and a satisfaction from my marriage and early steps in recovery. I went to meetings with other alcoholics daily, and so each day my old ways and perspectives changed. I took fewer chances in my personal life and more in my work. I found fulfillment in new areas. I was no longer the It guy of the ’80’s or the sole star of studio movies, but I didn’t care. I left that to others who kept track of such things and who never knew that particular club had been toxic for me anyway.

  I worked with collaborators who challenged me and who weren’t interested in “Rob Lowe,” but wanted the right actor for the right role, people like Sir Richard Eyre of the National Theatre and Dame Maggie Smith. Working with them and Natasha Richardson on a filmed revival of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer satisfied me at a professional level I hadn’t approached before. It wasn’t about “looks,” it wasn’t about “heat,” and we weren’t chasing an audience. It was, instead, about story and language and performance. And I was happy to be with artists whose careers were made purely on talent.

  (Side note for young actors: Say yes to any opportunity to grow and/or do good work. You never know where it will lead or who may be paying attention. When I asked the great Richard Eyre what inspired him to choose me to play opposite Maggie Smith, he said, “I saw you in Wayne’s World.” Go figure!)

  While shooting Suddenly, Last Summer in London, I take Sheryl to see Pavarotti in Tosca at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. On the way to the men’s room, I run into Sting, who gives me shit about dating the hot blonde dancer from his “We’ll Be Tog
ether” video a few years back.

  “I’ve hung up my spurs. I’m married now,” I tell him as we stand in our tuxedos, waiting to pee.

  “Well, bring the wife and come for the weekend with us!” he says.

  Presobriety, I would’ve been too shy to accept, or written this invitation off as small talk. But now, I take people for their word and have almost silenced that inner voice that kept me from extending myself and making new friendships.

  “Let’s do it this weekend!” I say.

  Sting and his wife, Trudie, live in a breathtaking manor house in the Wiltshire countryside. Built hundreds of years ago, it makes for a romantic weekend getaway. We walk to Stonehenge, which is practically in the backyard. Pavarotti drops by, and he and Sting record a duet of “Panis Angelicus” for a new album. The recording studio, in the converted chapel of the ancient home, is filled with two of the most heavenly voices of the twentieth century. In fact, as Luciano hits the high notes of the aria, both Sting and I weep in spite of ourselves. The next day, Sheryl and I are wowed again as Sting records “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You,” his voice strong and high and clear as a bell.

  After a glorious dinner in front of a fireplace more than five hundred years old, Sheryl and I retire to our room. The night was an occasion to remember, and as it turned out, we always would. Nine months later, our first son, Matthew Edward Lowe, was born.

  I will never forget the first time I laid eyes on him, my shock at his blond hair and how he looked me directly and intently in the eye in the delivery room at Cedars-Sinai. I had suspected I would enjoy fatherhood, but holding this blue-eyed bundle and presenting him to his brave mother, I was filled with a passion that has not abated with time. I wanted meaning in my relationships? I wanted substance to go along with my natural exuberance for life? Well, here it was. All nine and a half pounds of him. He of the arresting stare. He of the blond and (for now) hilariously cone-shaped head. My boy. My Matthew.