Rob Lowe

Sodapop Curtis in The Outsiders put him in a room with Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, and Francis Ford Coppola at 18. St. Elmo's Fire made him a Brat Pack poster boy two years later. The whole thing unraveled at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, where a sex tape he filmed was later found to include a 16-year-old. He's said he knew it was serious when he led the evening news with Tom Brokaw. He settled out of court, completed 20 hours of community service, and spent the next decade in supporting roles in comedies while his generation moved on.

The West Wing was the comeback nobody expected. Playing Sam Seaborn opposite Martin Sheen (whose family he'd grown up near in Malibu) earned him Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and introduced him to an audience too young for St. Elmo's Fire. He left the show in Season 4 in a pay dispute, which turned out fine. Parks and Recreation followed, then five seasons of 9-1-1: Lone Star, concluding in 2025. He now hosts The Floor on Fox and has a production deal with the network. Most of his Brat Pack peers are either in recovery or largely forgotten. He's just still here.

He's been deaf in his right ear since infancy, from a mumps infection nobody caught. He later deliberately took a deaf role in the 1994 TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand. He grew up so close to the Sheen family that their Malibu house was his Christmas Eve destination every year, and Martin Sheen became his West Wing boss decades later. Two New York Times bestselling memoirs and a weekly celebrity interview podcast give him a second lane beyond acting. He's been sober since 1990 and brings it up constantly, which is either admirably honest or a brand strategy depending on your patience.