Rob Lowe

Rob Lowe: (revealing his children's former nanny was blackmailing him) A former employee is demanding my wife Sheryl and I pay her $1.5 million by the end of the week or she will accuse us both of a vicious laundry list of false terribles. It is an attempt to damage and humiliate not only my wife and me, but our two young sons as well.

Rob Lowe: (on playing political characters a number of times) I'm starting to feel a bit like Michael Corleone in The Godfather III when he says, "Every time I try to get away, they keep pulling me back in!"

Rob Lowe: (on filming his final scenes on "The West Wing") It was very emotional. I had gone through my own grieving process; I'd moved on and done other projects, but the folks still on the show hadn't. I thought I would be more prepared for it than I was when I went back. When (the crew) started phasing out the other actors forever by saying, "That's the last shot for Donna - Janel Moloney, ladies and gentlemen…" and everybody clapped, it was unbelievable - and really, really emotional.

Rob Lowe: (after turning down the role of Dr McDreamy on Grey's Anatomy) I could have been McDreamy. It's an occupational hazard. It's like Brad Pitt turns down The Matrix to go do Seven Years In Tibet. It happens to everybody.

(When asked who his favourite actor is) Rob Lowe: Paul Newman. I love him. When I was a kid he was what it meant to be a movie star. He's funny, he's smart. There's a sense that he has a very full life outside his work. I so admire him for that.

Rob Lowe: When I was young and crazy, I was young and crazy. It can be hard enough just to BE in your teens and 20s. Then add fame, money, access, and every single person telling you that you're the greatest person who ever was, and it can be a recipe for disaster. Some people literally don't survive it.

Rob Lowe: I think you like to recreate the good things about your childhood for your own kids, a sense of community and neighborhood, Little League games.

Rob Lowe: I think part of maturity is knowing who you are. If people don't like it, it is not going to affect how I feel.

Rob Lowe: I wouldn't go back on my old days, though; everybody needs to have their wild years. It's just a question of when and I'd rather have had them early than be doing it as a mid-life crisis type thing.

Rob Lowe: Show me someone who doesn't have some sort of experience that they would be uncomfortable for people to know about and I'll show you a dullard.

Rob Lowe: The '80s were about trying to establish myself as an actor with a career. And being a teenager enjoying the fruits of being successful with lots of what I think is appropriate for that age.

Rob Lowe: What's gratifying about West Wing is that everybody told us that it couldn't be done - that the man or woman on the street didn't care about politics. But if you set things up correctly, people don't have a problem with it.

Rob Lowe: (discussing his role of Sam on The West Wing) Temperamentally, Sam and I are very much alike. He's a lawyer, my father's a lawyer, and I always wanted to play one. On so many levels the role just felt right. I fell in love with it as I would a woman.

Rob Lowe: I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life...though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

Rob Lowe: I have a lot of great memories, but I can't imagine anything more exciting than the life I have now.

Rob Lowe: Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself. I don't put it on a platform. I don't campaign about it. It's just something that works for me. It enabled me to really connect with another human being - my wife, Sheryl - which I was never able to do before.

Rob Lowe: The '80s were about trying to establish myself as an actor with a career. And being a teenager enjoying the fruits of being successful with lots of what I think is appropriate for that age.

Rob Lowe: I liked being a teenager, but I would not go back for all the tea in China.

Rob Lowe: I like the tradition of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances and how they react to events which force them to be heroic in a way that is not in their natures.

(Lowe about his marriage proposal) Rob Lowe: We'd been dating a year, I had planned it for a month, bought the ring - a big diamond. Nothing escapes my wife's attention, so I had to find a place to hide it. I put it in a dirty tube sock in the trunk of my car, thinking she'd never look there, let alone touch it. When I proposed to her on Mulholland Drive, I was so nervous I had forgotten to get the ring from the trunk beforehand. I had to say, 'Hold on, I've got to get something.' But all that matters is that it worked.

Rob Lowe: I don't approve of those new colors. There should be no blue M&M...for God's sake, can't something in this world stay old school? My favorite is green.

(About his sons) Rob Lowe: We love hiking, exploring, basketball, and a good book at bedtime. The next thing I know it's 4 a.m. and I've fallen asleep beside them.

(In an interview with US Magazine in 1999) Rob Lowe: In the first grade, they wanted to put me in a special learning program because my favorite color was black. They thought I was profoundly disturbed, but even in first grade, I knew that black was slimming.

Rob Lowe: I coach a Little League baseball team. It's my favorite thing in the world.

Rob Lowe: Directors are not worried about casting beautiful women, but they are not sure that they want to cast great-looking men. My looks have prevented people from seeing my work.

Rob Lowe: I entered 2000 with a new inspiration: Aaron Sorkin, who is the creator and executive producer of The West Wing.