["Pomp and Circumstance"]
Let's get back a bit, if you wouldn't mind.
Well, you came from Ohio, is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, right. How did you end up in Hollywood?
Did you come from a professional background?
Was the family interested in this?
Well, I think my dad was in a college play once,
and then he went into law, so he's still acting.
Yes, right.
And my mom was an English teacher
before she met my dad.
And then when they divorced, my mom remarried my stepfather,
who's a doctor in Los Angeles.
Oh, really?
So that's how I ended up there, and I started acting then.
Had you done any acting before you went to Los Angeles,
or were you very young then?
Oh, yeah, I'd started acting back when I was living in Ohio.
I started doing children's roles when I was about 10, 8, 9, 10.
Did you like that?
I loved it. I loved it.
You know, when everybody else was out playing baseball or soccer,
which I played a little bit in high school.
I didn't play high school sports because I was really, really focused on my career.
I mean, when a lot of people are focused on their studies to go to law school
or to do whatever they want to do,
I was focused on becoming the actor I wanted to do.
You really knew then that you wanted to do it.
Oh, absolutely, at that age.
And when people say, oh, you had it easy and you became a success so young,
that's true.
I did become a success young, but what they don't realize is
I started planning for it when I was about 12.
We were first aware of you, I suppose, in this country in class,
but you'd made a very good impression on television in Thursday's Child,
hadn't you, before that?
Yes, and the Francis Ford Coppola movie.
The Outsiders.
The Outsiders, which really, you know...
Has so to pop.
Has so to pop credits, yeah.
When you look back, it's coming up on pretty close to 10 years, I guess, now,
and you look back on it and you look at everybody who had started...
That extraordinary cast.
Yeah, it's really...
And not only did it start those actors, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze,
Emilio Stavros, me, you know, and all those...
But it started the young actor movie,
which then gave you The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire,
and on and on and on.
And that was the phase the movie industry went through,
and now it's changed now.
I mean, now we're all kind of branching out into different areas.
Yes, well, that's the hard part, I guess, is that, Rob,
in the old days when they had, say, studios and everybody was on a contract,
you made a series of films that built your career,
which you had to rely, I guess, on the producers.
Now you've got to rely on what you look for.
Well, then in the studio days, the studio had a vested interest in your career.
They said, oh, here's Rob Lowe.
The bad news was, they'd say, we want him to be the romantic lead.
And so then that's what you were.
You wanted to use the romantic leads.
Yeah, and if you wanted to be something different, that was the bad news.
But the good news was they looked out for you.
They let you start out in parts where you learned.
They kept the press off your back.
Nobody ever wrote anything bad about the stars
because the studio controlled that publicity.
That was another thing that people don't realize.
So it's funny.
I mean, people, I don't know if the studio system, if I would have liked it or not,
but it sure would have been, there are elements to it that would have been very, very nice.
I know that things might have been different.
What do you rely on now, then? What do you look for?
Do the scripts come to you or through your agent
and the agent says this will be something good for you, Rob, or how does it work?
They come to the agent or the manager
and sometimes they throw them over the fence at the house.
I mean, I've had it. They come up in restaurants.
Usually it's all through your agency and they'll read them first.
And I read everything that they get.
They can read it and say, oh, it's awful, but I always want to read it
because everybody's taste is so subjective.
I mean, there have been plenty of things that I've done that my agents have hated
or didn't want me to do, bad influence, playing Alex, a prime example.
They wanted you to play Michael. My agent said, I don't understand why.
I would have done it anyway. I wouldn't have cared what he thought,
but it took me an hour of convincing him of how I saw the role.
And he said, you know what, you're right.
You know, you have to listen to yourself.
It puts a lot back on yourself, doesn't it?
But it's essential. Then you've only got yourself to blame.
Blame, you know. Exactly.
And it also makes it easier to live with your failures
when you only have yourself to blame.
Otherwise, you'd be like, I should have never listened to him.