Rob Lowe reveals his secrets to reinventing yourself

Rob Lowe at PaleyFest 2015.
(Image credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Being Rob Lowe means you're a bad-boy teen star, a scandalized celebrity in the way of Kim Kardashian, a hyperactive government employee, and an advocate for proper grooming all rolled into one. It means you grew up in Southern California 40 years ago and still surf unironically today. It means you're both a genetic marvel and a dude with "scrawny arms" who gets bested by a jar of mayonnaise. In short, it means you're king of reinventing yourself.

That's the point of this month's GQ cover story about the actor, who has been famous for three decades. Lowe divulged to writer Amy Wallace his tips for re-branding, which include:

  • Get noticed in the first place (as he had to do when sharing a screen with the likes of Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze in the 1983 movie The Outsiders)
  • Learn to live with disappointment (which he had to do after seeing he was mostly edited out of The Outsiders)
  • Be willing to change things up (like he did, playing optimism machine Chris Traeger on Parks and Recreation while simultaneously playing convicted killer Drew Peterson in a TV movie)
  • Stand up for yourself (as he did when he left The West Wing after "insulting" contract negotiations)
  • Use facial moisturizer (which he credits for his good looks, and which he's been doing since he was 15)

Lowe also dishes on which celebrities reached out to him after his sex tape scandal broke (hint: not many), his habit for tracking his life stages with tattoos, and the time he punched a surfer mid-wave. Read the whole profile at GQ.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Kimberly Alters

Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.