Robert Hepler Lowe (born March 17, 1964) is an American actor, filmmaker, and entertainment host. Following numerous television roles in the early 1980s, he came to prominence as a teen idol and member of the Brat Pack with starring roles in The Outsiders (1983), Class (1983), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Oxford Blues (1984), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), About Last Night... (1986), and Masquerade (1988). Experiencing a career decline in the 1990s, Lowe mostly starred as a lead in direct-to-video and television film productions, while having supporting roles in widely released comedy films like Wayne's World (1992), Tommy Boy (1995), and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999).
Lowe returned to prominence portraying Sam Seaborn in the NBC political drama series The West Wing (1999–2003), for which he received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. His other series roles include Robert McCallister on the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters (2006–2010), Chris Traeger on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation (2010–2015), and Captain Owen Strand on the Fox drama 9-1-1: Lone Star (2020–2025). He was also nominated for an Actor Award for playing John F. Kennedy in the television film Killing Kennedy (2013) and received another Golden Globe Award nomination for his role of Dr. Jack Startz in Behind the Candelabra (2013).
He currently hosts his podcast Literally! with Rob Lowe (2020–present) and the game show The Floor (2024–present).
Robert Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, to Barbara (née Hepler), a teacher, and Charles 'Chuck' Davis Lowe, a trial lawyer. While still a baby, he lost complete hearing in his right ear as a result of undiagnosed mumps. His parents divorced when Lowe and his younger brother Chad were young. Lowe was baptized in the Episcopal Church. He is of German, English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry. On the show Who Do You Think You Are?, Lowe found out that one of his ancestors, Christopher East, served as a Hessian soldier during the U.S. War of Independence. His ancestor served under the command of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall and was captured at the American victory at Trenton, New Jersey, on the morning of December 26, 1776. As a POW, his ancestor was given a choice, and took the option to stay in the United States. He has two half brothers from the second marriages of his parents, the producer Micah Dyer (maternal) and Justin Lowe (paternal).
Lowe grew up in Dayton, Ohio, in a "traditional American setting". He attended Oakwood Junior High School before moving to the Point Dume area of Malibu, California, with his mother and brother. In California, he attended Santa Monica High School, where he met Charlie Sheen. In his autobiography Stories I Only Tell My Friends, he wrote regarding Sheen, "We were both nerds [...] he wanted to be a baseball player." On a March 25, 2019, episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast, Lowe boasted that he was once capable of bench pressing 135 pounds as a senior member of Santa Monica High School's baseball team, which has become a reoccurring punchline on his Literally podcast.
1976–1998: Early roles and leading man stardom
Lowe got his first professional acting role in 1976 when he was 12 and still living in Dayton. He played an errand boy in a production of Sherlock Holmes at the Wright State University summer theater. He landed the part by calling every local theater and asking each if there was a part for a child in a play. Lowe was paid $150 for the role. In 1979, Lowe landed the part of Tony Flanagan in the short-lived television comedy A New Kind of Family. One of Lowe's earliest roles came in the 1983 television film Thursday's Child, for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film. He also appeared in the music video for The Go-Go's song, "Turn to You".
His breakthrough roles, however, were in 1983 as Sodapop Curtis in Francis Ford Coppola's cinematic adaptation of S. E. Hinton's novel, The Outsiders, where he shared the screen with an ensemble cast that included Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Leif Garrett, C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze, and as "Skip" Burroughs IV in the coming-of-age comedy film Class along with Andrew McCarthy and Jacqueline Bisset. Next in 1984, he starred opposite Jodie Foster in Tony Richardson's The Hotel New Hampshire, and opposite Ally Sheedy and Amanda Pays in the sports film Oxford Blues. Lowe and Estevez reunited in St. Elmo's Fire (1985), making them the two more prominent actors from the group known as the Brat Pack. About Last Night... (1986) followed, with Demi Moore (who had starred alongside Lowe in St. Elmo's Fire). He then received his second Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the mentally disabled Rory in Square Dance (1987).
In August 1987, he performed on stage, playing Baron Tusenbach in Chekov's The Three Sisters at The Williamstown Theatre Festival. In 1993, while filming a British TV production of the Tennessee Williams play Suddenly, Last Summer with Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson, he recalled in an interview that he had run into Paul Newman four years earlier at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and that Newman had encouraged him to continue to work in theatre. In 1988, he starred in the thriller Masquerade. In 1989, as part of the opening ceremony for the (critically derided) telecast of the 61st Academy Awards produced by Allan Carr, Lowe made his musical debut singing a reworked duet of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" alongside actress Eileen Bowman, who was dressed as an unauthorized depiction of Snow White. In the 1990s, Lowe appeared in Wayne's World (1992), The Stand (1994), based on Stephen King's book of the same name, Tommy Boy (1995) and Contact (1997).
1999–2009: The West Wing and acclaim
Lowe played Young Number Two in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), and reprised his role in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). He starred as Sam Seaborn in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2003 (and briefly in 2006). His performance in the show garnered Lowe a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and two Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Drama Series. Lowe was drawn to the role because of his personal love of politics, and his longstanding friendship with Martin Sheen, who was cast as President Josiah Bartlet.
When the show premiered, Lowe was considered the lead, and the pilot centered on his character. But as other members of the cast —including Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Janel Moloney, Dulé Hill, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford, Martin Sheen (who was initially scripted as a small role), and Stockard Channing (whose First Lady was initially scripted as a guest role)— grew more popular, Lowe's character no longer served as the show's main focus. Lowe and series creator Aaron Sorkin soon found themselves at odds over the network's meddling with the show, most notably the network demanding changes in Lowe's character. Eventually, Lowe left the series, not long before Sorkin and director/executive producer Thomas Schlamme resigned over a dispute with NBC.
During the final season of The West Wing, Lowe returned to his role of Sam Seaborn, appearing in two of the final four episodes. In 2011, Lowe stated on The Oprah Winfrey Show that he left the show because he did not feel he was being respected, when the other lead characters received a raise and he did not. After leaving The West Wing, Lowe was the star and executive producer of a failed NBC drama, The Lyon's Den (2003). In 2004, he tried again in a series entitled Dr. Vegas, but it also was quickly canceled. Lowe passed on the role of Derek Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy, which eventually went to Patrick Dempsey, in favor of doing Dr. Vegas.
Despite his two canceled TV series and flops like View From the Top and the made-for-TV movie Perfect Strangers during his post–West Wing run, Lowe found success in the TV miniseries genre. In 2004, Lowe starred in the TNT remake of the Stephen King miniseries Salem's Lot, which was the highest-rated cable program of that summer and the highest ratings TNT original programming had at the time. In 2005, he starred as Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee in Sorkin's London West End production of A Few Good Men, the first time the two had worked together since The West Wing. Although Lowe had expressed unhappiness about his decreased role on that show at the time of his departure, he has now repeatedly said that any animosity between them is over and that he was pleased to be working once more with Sorkin. That same year, Lowe starred in the miniseries Beach Girls on the Lifetime network, based on the Luanne Rice novel of the same name. The series premiere received the highest ratings for a movie premiere in Lifetime history. Later, Lowe filmed his supporting role as a movie agent in the 2006 independent film Thank You for Smoking.