I was gonna go.

But then I got the outsider's gonna do the outsiders of Francis Ford Coppola.

Where am I gonna go at a freshman year at U C L A u C.

I think it shows.

Okay, I am Rob Lowe, and this is the timeline of my career.

My first big job of 15.

I had a David Cassidy hair.

D'oh.

Although my brother Chad likes to say that I heard you look more like Karen Carpenter's.

It's a look.

I had my first girlfriend, and in the summers I would have to go back to Ohio to visit my dad appearance were divorced, had to go away for the summer, and I was so heartbroken.

My agents called.

They're like, Yeah, there's a an audition If you want to pay your own fare and fly back for it, yes, I'll do it.

I could have cared less the only real reason I came back because I wanted to see the girl.

Well, I got it.

I learned a lot about comedy from Eileen Brennan, who played my mom, and she was just coming off a private Benjamin, where she was nominated for an Oscar.

We shot a bunch of shows and weren't on the air.

Denilson.

We were on the air and did our next show.

And when I came out, the girls screamed in the audience.

We've been on the air one week and I thought, Wait a minute, I'm still the dweeb that couldn't get a date in high school.

It's the power of entertainment.

It was a horrible bomb.

There were 62 shows on television.

You're looking at number 62 dead last and the network's big fix Little You turn it on one Friday and there was a new family.

Living there didn't work.

But here's the good news.

The daughter Janet Jackson, Miss Jackson.

If you're nasty for what?

Brawn.

No brains.

You see my picture?

How about my jeans?

I was still knew enough that I didn't realize how unique it was.

Coppola had all of the actors auditioning come at the same time to a sound stage he had bought and we would all sit on the floor and we would place characters, and then he would send one down, have somebody come up and change characters.

We all watched each other and then it went on like this, 12 hours a day for days.

I don't know if the best actors got the parts, but I will tell you that for sure that most competitive in the toughest ones kill or be killed.

When we got the movie, there was a ton of prep.

Francis would create a world for us.

You have us going sleep overnight for nights with these grease or families.

So it's me and Tom Cruise in a guest bedroom in some bad area.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, with some people who are high school delinquents.

Francis wanted toughness up, so he had us play tackle football on the asphalt with, like the local gang of thugs, Tommy Howell being the most sophisticated one of all of us.

It was all of 13 huddled us up and he says, I know about you, but I'm out of here.

I break my leg on this play off somebody else playing Ponyboy tomorrow and we'd sort of boycott and walked off endless, endless, endless training for the rumble.

That was my first time learning stunts.

And we had a great buddy, Joe Hooker, probably the first iconic stunt man, each one of us got to sort of choreograph our own version of the fight that we would work on relentlessly.

The day we went to shoot, it was a massive, torrential rainstorm, Francis said.

I'll just shoot in the rain, and then the rain stopped.

So for the next week, we had to bring in a crane God, just those nights under the rain and mud.

I mean, it wasn't apocalypse now, but it was close.

We were gonna get every seventh grader in the country.

Pretty much is required to read the book.

And of course they see the movie.

So every year I get 13 year olds who lose their mind.

That is an amazing gift.

Is an actor how always kind of be frozen in time?

It's really special.

You know what it is?

It's ST Elmo's fire electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere to be barely 21.

Being able to make movies with people you loved.

The movies were about us hanging out, so all we did would hang out.

The part I played was part of Billy.

I know a good part when I read one, but they didn't want me for that part.

They wanted me to play this straight square part that Nelson played because they didn't think I was edgy enough.

So I spend the next 20 years of my life proving them wrong.

I showed up for my meeting with Joel Schumacher with, like, a six pack of beer ago things, guys, and I got that part.

That's not a in easy speech.

It's so earnest.

And also the meaning of state almost fires all like wacky guide.

Entire journeys by sailors thought it was the things that appeared on the mast of ships.

But it's not.

It's the things that appear in the biz like, but I think I did it.

Okay, I made it up because they thought they needed to keep him going and things got tough.

Those movies still have Ah, meaning, which I'm shocked at, really something like stranger things, for example, and you go, Yeah, that's that's based on my character from saying almost fire the year that that came out.

I remember going out for Halloween and seeing multiple people dressed as my character, weird and awesome by way.

The only reason I knew where my character is that a saxophone around their necks in a bad wig.

I followed, like Clarence Clemons around from the E Street band.

Usually it's worn right here, but mine's worn like a guitar and I can throw it over my back.

It's a guitar strap.

It's hilarious.

It's so good.

Yeah, the sack scenes.

My favorite, I can fake play the sax to this day.

I'm better at fake doing everything.

Welcome to club Struck in the chin.

Thank you, Dido.

If you'd told me that I would host Saturday Night Live one day, I think it was the highlight.

And frankly, remains.

One of the greatest compliments I ever got was from Mike Myers.

You said that I should have been a not ready for prime time player in Alec Baldwin, and I would have loved Lauren likes to describe hosting.

It is being exacting, shot out of a cannon when the adrenaline, when they announce you and you come out and it's that iconic stage and they're playing that iconic opening music in terms of rushes, I don't know if I've ever talked about the real collaboration had was with Mike Myers.

He was either going to do a Wayne's World Sketch or Sprockets, knows that I'm not a Big Wayne's world fan with Little Die now, and I played a TN the pan sexual choreographer it was Mike and I had such a good time that when he wrote Wayne's World, he wrote me into it.

Purely because of that.

I know that I may be wasting my time, but here I am with the contract and two cashier's checks for $5000 each.

Mike and Dana had never been in a movie.

They didn't know where to stand in front of a camera.

I'm not kidding.

Impairment was like, Yeah, whatever.

Sure, Lauren here, some chump change.

You make your little whatever, and I sat in a screening and Bohemian Rhapsody came on, and when they started moving their heads like this, the place went ballistic like I've never seen before.

And I remember looking at Mike and looking at each other and literally the rest was history.

Benjamin was a really, really fun character for me to do and started.

My many career is a good looking comic dick.

I was just so excited t be allowed to be funny, and then is it grew into Tommy Boy and Austin Powers.

It was a chance to use a muscle that I hadn't had a chance to.

I mean about last night, and sandals were have comedy end them, but they're not comedy comedy.

So it was.

It was pretty fun.

Yeah, you're fired.

Come on.

You believe John Smith is getting married tomorrow?

I'm uncredited in Tommy Boy and the first Austin Well, you know he works as a henchman.

That's literally a cameo on the very first Austin.

I think it's on Lee.

In the extended DVD cut, Michael Rises said, We're friends and we were playing golf one day.

I grew up with Robert Wagner.

I knew his daughters and we started talking about R.

J.

He's called and I imitated him and Mike lost his way, laughed about it, and that was it.

And six months later, he sent me Austin Powers.

Spike Shag me and there I am in the script Young number two, played by Rob Lowe.

First of all, Dr Evil's my favorite character in cinema history.

The globe was there when we were screwing around.

I would I would dribble it like a basketball, and it got me thinking and I went to Michael's Got him.

I do remember the great Santini and makes a cinema file like me.

And that's a great movie with Robert Duvall.

He was a bastard father, and he's making his son play basketball.

Come on.

We should do great Santini where you throw the ball off my head.

We only did it once.

We did it in one take as an ad lib and it made it into a movie.

You gonna cry?

You're gonna squirt some gonna cry.

Oh, yeah.

So you gonna cry your big man now, huh?

Yeah.

So there's a woman over there.

I think she's looking at me.

Really?

I never know.

When I read the title West Wing, I thought it was a sequel to Pensacola.

Wings of Gold.

No idea.

What the hell Waas I've never really had this in my career, ever.

I was like, Oh, on this guy.

That's all fine and good for me to feel that way.

The question is, what does everybody else think?

And I vaguely knew the name Aaron Sorkin.

Aaron, to this day has you come in and read because his writings very specific and you can either do it, you can.

They offer me the part in the parking lot.

I clearly had a connection that I had a conversation with a very famous actor who is going to maybe do newsroom.

You have to say everything that he had like, yeah, so wait.

So, like, I can't like, you know, like making my own like, Dude, you're not making it your own What?

Why would I ever want to do that?

Because the beauty of it is the math.

Being able to be in the orchestra to know your place, to play your notes.

I remember the audition like I knew it.

Cold comma letter Perfect.

I mean, Aaron's just a guy writes great stuff.

I do think, though coming off of that comedy run I was on got me the part.

It was the very first scene in the pilot, and when I was done, everybody laughed and Aaron turned to the network, and I told you the scene was funny.

It was a unwritten rule of show business.

You do not do show about politics on Lee because Aaron wrote such a good script.

Did they even consider it?

And even then it sat literally in a desk until Scott Sassa that then president NBC doesn't get a shot.

Now there are 10 political shows on every single network.

Remember, that is not the DNC, but rather your tax dollars to pay my salary.

So I work for you, whether you voted for us or not.

My body has no fat to protect itself from disease.

Things happen very quickly.

Listen to me.

It's very important that you replenish my body with electrolytes after every involuntary loss of bodily fluids.

So there was a notion that they were gonna add a character to 30 rock my favorite show ever and that I would be a nemesis to Alec.

And I don't think there's ever a really conversation.

But it sparked the network, saying, I don't know about that.

But would Rob ever consider going on?

Proxima creation was a total shotgun marriage.

I met Mike.

Sure, Mike met me and it was literally a blind date.

Literally csaid it when I remember Amy just happened to walk in, you know, love fest.

From the minute from Go.

Mike understandably didn't know if it would fit.

And frankly, neither did I.

So we kind of agreed that we would do a six episode trial, but because Amy was pregnant, it was really this convoluted schedule where really crazy.

We decided really, really early that it was great and we all wanted to do.

And I remember the day that it happened.

We're doing an episode that's called a flu episode, gets very, very sick, and he looks in the mirror and says, Stop pooping And that's an ad lib.

And when I looked in the mirror and ad libbed that I think make sure was like we're keeping him, that staff was insane.

It's like 1927 New York Yankees Murderer's row.

Everybody on the show is a steroid version of who they actually are.

I do have a little bit of energy, and I am kind of optimistic, and I am kind of enthusiastic, and they just mainline it.

So much so that season's end playing Chris, I wonder if there's just other layers to Chris, there's none that Chris could be excited about.

The most mundane, boring thing.

It just was a well that never ran dry.