He’s Handsome—You Noticed? —but Not Just

Any discerning reader who gets as far in Rob Lowe’s memoir as the photo on the front cover will notice that he is good looking. So good looking that it’s almost a liability,and that his memoir,Stories I Only Tell My Friends has to take his appearance into account. He had to decide how to handle this, in a book.

False modesty was one option,but he turns out to be too smart for that. Indignation and whining were others,but he’s too self-deprecatingly funny. So often in this book he marvels at the sheer absurdity of his circumstances,as when he sat weeping at the deathbed of his beloved grandma,only to have a nurse ask for his autograph. He reels off a long string of catnip-filled stories that are headed straight for the gossip mill. But the book has to start small,just as he did. He once lived in Dayton,Ohio and was part of a song and dance group called Peanut Butter and Jelly. “Usually chocolate milk from Mom can make it go away,” he writes of the childhood anomie brought on by his parents’ breakup. Here he is recreating his feelings as a 5-year-old,but relies on the present tense throughout the book,trying to summon the naïveté of earlier times. In 1976,his mother moved the family to a modest house in Malibu,Calif.,because of its air quality,and his neighbours were the Penns and Sheens. He was outstandingly ambitious among his schoolmates in Malibu and Santa Monica,many of whom were bound for glory. But his own story doesn’t catch fire until he gets to the guess-who game that gave him his big break in movies. Guess who liked to make home movies of his schoolmates? Chris Penn,brother of Sean. Guess who Chris’s best friend was? Charlie Sheen. Guess what Charlie’s father,Martin,had been doing? Having a meltdown while making Apocalypse Now for Francis Ford Coppola. Guess who he would put in The Outsider,his 1983 movie that launched a whole generation of future dreamboats? The whole neighborhood,Lowe included.

He writes insightfully about what would turn out to be a watershed moment in his life and career. Overlooked though he might have been,he was sent into the show-business stratosphere by The Outsider. And stayed there for a while capitalising on and suffering for his appearance. “There is just no way anyone is likely to take a 19-year-old boy as pretty as I was seriously,” he writes.

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As his memoir unfolds,the full extent of his fame and notoriety turn out to be greater than expected. He was horribly embarrassed by a sex tape before such embarrassments were taken in stride. Arguably even more horrible was his moment at the Oscars—dancing with Snow White. Macabre highlights of this chapter in his life,which included an affair with Princess Stephanie of Monaco.

Now 47,married and the father of two teenage sons,he was an alcoholic during these stories’ highest times. Sometimes the combination of wooziness and in-the-moment narrative can be tricky but he sustains that gee-whiz note of surprise throughout the book and emerges as a canny observer of both himself and others,and as someone whose instincts have grown increasingly sharp over time.Janet Maslin