Rob Lowe reveals private self in 'Stories I Only Tell My Friends'

By Craig Wilson, USA TODAY

You can say what you want about Rob Lowe. He's smart enough to put his amazingly pretty face on the cover of his new autobiography. Sporting a sexy two-day stubble, to boot.

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  Rob Lowe comes across as a nice guy in his memoir Stories I Only Tell My Friends..

Rob Lowe comes across as a nice guy in his memoir Stories I Only Tell My Friends..

There are millions of women who will buy this book just to have Lowe looking up at them from their bedstand. Worth the $26 right there.

But as is the way with every pretty face ? is there anything behind it? Depends what you're looking for.

To be fair, Lowe comes across as a nice guy in his memoir Stories I Only Tell My Friends. Vulnerable. At times, lonely. Confused even. With his looks and fame he could be a jerk. He's not.

Even he doesn't understand why he won the handsome gene lottery in such a big way. At least he doesn't pretend he never noticed. He has. Right down to the fact that some in Hollywood have dismissed him because of his good looks.

Other than that bit of introspection, all the standard Hollywood material is here. His parents' divorce, his move to Malibu with his Mom at 11, his immediate success in finding acting jobs. It helped that his oceanside neighbors were mostly bold-faced names, the Martin Sheens included.

So, yes, we travel through the decades. The Outsiders at 15. A member of the Brat Pack at 20. His TV fame walking the halls of the White House in The West Wing.

At times Lowe falls into the "and then, and then, and then" syndrome, although there are amusing tidbits about Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Robert Wagner and "frenemy" Michael J. Fox, whom he calls Mike and with whom he once shared a bed. No, not in that way.

Speaking of beds, he also mentions dozens of his sexual conquests, including Princess Stephanie and his now-famous sex tape escapade.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends

By Rob Lowe

Henry Holt, 308 pp, $26

Woven in is the obligatory Hollywood addiction, of course. In Lowe's case it's alcohol. Rehab and a sober life follow. Good for him. The never-ending perks of a movie star's life are what brought him down. He calls them "adventures in room service and benign debauchery."

And then one day he realizes he's made it. He's adored. The revelation came to him in, of all things, USA TODAY.

"On the front page was one of their famous (and hilariously banal) pie charts that are meant to present a daily snapshot of America," he writes. "On that day the title was 'Who We Love.'" Some 68% of America loved Lowe.

The news, however, didn't make him happy, he writes. By then Lowe was old enough to realize that fame can be rather empty.

Kind of like a celebrity autobiography.

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