Rob Lowe: High on Lowe

"A chance to play a part like this was exciting," he says. "And also, it was a chance to work with Jodie [Foster] again." (Foster, who starred with Lowe in The Hotel New Hampshire, will later tell me, "Rob is the funniest person I know. He's a great mimic, he can do everyone. Did he do me? Because he does the best Jodie Foster ever.")

"Contact is a great story," Lowe continues. "Jodie plays a scientist who is at one of the listening posts that the government has, where they interpret signals from outer space to see if anyone is trying to communicate with us. And then she hears something that is indeed a signal. They are sending us plans to build a spaceship. And it raises all kinds of moral issues. Is there a God? What is our place in the universe? It's a very human story."

Whatever Contact does for Lowe moviewise, he also has a deal going with the producers behind the hit TV show The Golden Girls to develop a sitcom.

"I thought I'd never say this," says Lowe, "but I've been wanting to do a TV show. All the funniest writers are on TV."

"Why did you move to Santa Barbara?" I ask. It's not like any picture of Santa Barbara doesn't answer the question, but it's a schlepp back and forth if you're working in L.A.

"When I was a teenager, I was friendly with Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. It was over a year before I ever met their father, because he was in the Philippines making Apocalypse Now. I knew I didn't want that in my life. As soon as Sheryl and I had kids, I wanted to move to a place where they could play outside and meet other kids who weren't in this business. Come up to the house tomorrow. You'll see. Santa Barbara is the South of France ... why would I travel over there and pay $15 for a bottle of Evian when it's in my backyard?"

You only have to ask me once. The next afternoon I arrive at Lowe's house in Santa Barbara. As soon as I walk in, I'm awestruck. "Oh, how fabulous," I say. "You guys have money and taste."

"I have to give all the credit to Sheryl," says Lowe with a laugh. "She's the one with the eye." He shows me around, past Sheryl's collection of Victorian dishes, past the silver cigar paraphernalia (cigar smoking is Lowe's one vice since he gave up drugs and drinking in 1990), even into the his-and-hers closets. Every part of the house is arranged in a way to make you feel at home and comfortable. We spend an hour just looking at the little details--Lowe is obviously so proud of the place that he doesn't seem to mind my endless questions. His two young sons, Matthew and John Owen, are napping in their rooms, so Lowe leads me out to the pool, where there's a rippling waterfall and soft music.

"I don't know if we can talk here," I say. "I'm afraid it's too noisy for the tape."

With a flick of his wrist, Lowe turns off the music and the waterfall. "Is that better?" he asks.

Ah, Hollywood. This is perfect. Lowe hasn't always lived in California--when he was a kid his parents divorced and when his mother remarried she moved the family from the Midwest to Southern California.

"Your mom married a shrink, right? And just as you were hitting puberty, you went from Dayton, Ohio, to living the life in Malibu--"

"My mom didn't marry a shrink--she married a county mental health worker," Lowe interrupts. "Over the years, it's become this story that makes it sound as if he was a really wealthy therapist with a house on the ocean. We lived in a little tract house. Malibu's gotten expensive, but when I first moved there, it was a sweet little town."

"Still, didn't you feel as if you'd died and gone to heaven?"

"You better believe it. I remember seeing Steve McQueen in the Mayfair Market, and I couldn't believe my eyes. I just followed him around the frozen-food section for a while and didn't say a word."

"You sort of have a Steve McQueen haircut going for you," I point out.

"This is left over from Contact. I'm not really sure what my real haircut is, it's been so long. As an actor you are never yourself, you're just remnants of who you've been paid to be."

"I read you did a TV series way back when, before you hit it big."

"I did a TV series with Eileen Brennan called A New Kind of Family, which was about two families sharing the same roof. Five years later that same idea became Kate & Allie, which was a hit, but my series was notable for its lack of success. My favorite story about it is that the network canceled us, brought us back, then fired the white family that 'my' family lived with and brought in a black family and never explained anything to the audience. One week they were white, the next they were black. The girl from the black family who was my age was Janet Jackson. I think she was about 15 at the time."

Now that we're comfortably ensconced in Lowe's luxurious refuge, I want to bring up the thing one of my girlfriends told me she thinks is what really screwed up Lowe's career.

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