Robert Helper Lowe was born in Virginia, USA on March 17th 1964. After a brief spell as a child model, he turned his attention acting. He made his debut in the television series A New Kind of Family (1979). However, it was his role as Sodapop Chris in the classic 1980's film The Outsiders (1983) that propelled him to stardom.

Rob then starred in a series of successful movies including St. Elmo's Fire (1985) and About Last Night (1986), and soon found himself labeled as the hottest actor in Hollywood.

However, his career went into freefall when in 1988 he was implicated in a sex tape involving an underage girl. Almost overnight, he went from A-list superstar to B movie actor. His life continued to spiral downwards and he developed drug and alcohol addictions.

Amazingly, Rob survived this period and slowly began to rebuild his acting career. Roles in Wayne's World (1992) and the three Austin Powers movies regained some of his popularity amongst the public but more importantly amongst Hollywood executives. This enabled the producers of a new television drama series to offer Rob one of the lead roles. The part was of Sam Seaborn and the series was The West Wing. The show became a huge worldwide success and Rob was right back in the ball game.