Rob Lowe, presumably recounting one of the stories he only tells his friends – as the title of his soon-to-be-released autobiography suggests – tells Vanity Fair in the magazine’s May issue that the Charlie Sheen he grew up with was one of the “uncool” guys, like him.
“The cool girls in Malibu had no time for me,” the handsome actor tells VF. “I wasn’t a beach volleyball player, a surfer, or a quasiburnout.”
Read more from Rob Lowe's Vanity Fair interview
But by 1987, Sheen and Lowe were young Hollywood stars, with Lowe filming “Masquerade” in the Hamptons as Sheen put in work on “Wall Street.”
“We competed to see who could play harder, then show up for work and still kick ass,” Lowe remembered. “The verdict: Charlie by a nose.”
In his book, Lowe recalls Sheen as “one‐of‐a‐kind … a Polo preppy clotheshorse in a world of O.P. shorts and surf T‐shirts” and “a wonderful mix of nerd … and rebel,” and also recounts meeting Tom Cruise, who was a house guest at the Sheen home way back when.
Cruise, Lowe says, was “open, friendly, funny, and has an almost robotic, bloodless focus and an intensity that I’ve never encountered before.” Even then, Lowe writes, Cruise was “already showing traits that will make him famous; he’s zeroed in like a laser.”
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Of course, after the ‘80s stardom came some rough patches for Lowe, but that was followed by more work - this time on the smaller screen. The actor is currently starring on the cult favorite NBC comedy, “Parks and Recreation.”
Through it all, Lowe tells Vanity Fair he has no regrets.
“The Brat Pack is timeless,” Lowe says. “We should all be so lucky in our lives to create things that we’re still talking about 25 years later.”
The issue, which features an excerpt from Lowe's "Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography," hits newsstands April 5.