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'Those Are My Guys': Rob Lowe Shares His Love For The Outsiders Costars
Rob Lowe looks back on his bond with his The Outsiders costars Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez in the coming-of-age classic.
Following numerous television roles in the early 1980s, Rob Lowe came to prominence as a teen idol and member of the Brat Pack with roles in films like The Outsiders (1983), Class (1983), The Hotel New Hampshire (1984), Oxford Blues (1984), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), About Last Night... (1986), and Square Dance (1987). The success of these films established him as a Hollywood star.
Recently in an interview with People, Lowe looked back on his bond with costars Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez in the coming-of-age classic, The Outsiders. "I turned 18 on-set in Tulsa... Those [costars] are my guys, my homies, my frat brothers," Lowe told the outlet. “We all were deadly serious and super-competitive. Tom [Cruise] being Tom took it to another level. He was just born with that kind of commitment and was inspiring."
Lowe played the role of Sodapop Curtis, the brother of the main characters Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell) and Darrel Curtis (Patrick Swayze). "It's funny, the movie meant different things to me over the years. As it was happening, it seemed perfectly natural, [and] that was my fraternity," he said. "And now with time, and with so many generations growing up and accepting the movie, and it being a part of their lives... to be part of it is really special."
Lowe's bond with Estevez, rooted in their childhood in Malibu, was deep and he appreciated having a best buddy to help him navigate the highs and lows of being a young Hollywood actor. "It was an amazing moment in time... and this [film] felt really special. The seriousness with which Francis and everybody, all the actors, took it, was really ahead of its time", he added.
The Outsiders is an adaptation of the 1967 novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton and was released on March 25, 1983, in the United States. Jo Ellen Misakian, a librarian at Lone Star Elementary School in Fresno, California, and her students were responsible for inspiring Coppola to make the film. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, most notably for its performances, and performed well at the box office, grossing $33.7 million on a $10 million budget.
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.
In 1988, Lowe, who was 24 years old at the time, was involved in a sex scandal over a videotape of him having sex with two people: Tara Siebert, who was 22, and her younger friend Lena Jan Parsons, who was 16 years old at the time. The three met at Club Rio, an Atlanta nightclub. They were videotaped the night before the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia.
As the age of consent in Georgia was 14 at the time, both were of legal age to engage in sexual activity, but 18 was the legal age to be involved in such a recording. At the time, Lowe was campaigning for Michael Dukakis. Eventually, his career rebounded and Lowe mocked his own behavior during two post-scandal appearances as host of Saturday Night Live.
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