Getting Lowe to look scruffy, now that’s the real mystery
A grungy man with a stubbled face and lank hair enters a homeless shelter. Moments later he’s locked in mortal combat with a priest, the pair hurtling through shattering glass to the street below.
At the start of TNT’s two-part adaptation of Stephen King‘s “Salem’s Lot,” which airs tonight and Monday at 8 p.m., the priest’s patrician profile is easily recognizable as actor James Cromwell.
But it might take a second glance to realize the grungy guy, Ben Mears, is the usually clean-cut Rob Lowe.
Mears, the protagonist of King’s 1975 novel, is a writer driven to explore hidden horror in his small Maine hometown.
“I don’t like slasher movies,” Lowe says. “I don’t like gore, but I love unrelenting, uncomfortable suspense and terror.”
For him, King’s books fall into the latter category.
” ‘Salem’s Lot’ was the first adult novel I read,” Lowe said. “I remember being really creeped out and unsettled by the fact that the vampires weren’t in some ornate coffins, but they were like vermin, hiding in the crawl space of your basement, maybe in the attic, in that pile of leaves in that dark corner.”
As a King fan, Lowe actively sought the role of Nick Andros in the 1994 TV adaptation of King’s “The Stand.” This time TNT approached him, although co-executive producer Mark Wolper acknowledges he wasn’t certain the 40-year-old actor would be willing to “scruff himself up.”
“He put his vanity aside,” Wolper says. “There’s not much you can do to make him unattractive, but he was certainly willing to get down and dirty.”
Lowe was last seen on the small screen as idealistic lawyer Jack Turner in NBC’s “The Lyon’s Den,” which he also produced.
It was canceled but, Lowe hasn’t given up. On the new CBS fall series “dr. vegas,” he plays Dr. William Grant, a Las Vegas physician with a “double nature” — “William when he’s the doctor and Billy when he’s out burning the candle at both ends,” as Lowe puts it.
The “provocative” milieu of Las Vegas provides an opportunity to tell “really cool stories in a really organic way,” says Lowe, and Grant gives him a chance to play “a guy with flaws … to have some fun as a guy who laughs … a guy with a gambling issue.”
He says he was a fan of James Garner in “The Rockford Files” and Alan Alda in “M*A*S*H,” and they are his “touchstones” for the “dr. vegas” role
Lowe has coped with his share of highs and lows in life. His initial success in such films as “Oxford Blues,” “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “About Last Night” in the mid-‘80s stalled when he was sentenced to 20 months of community service after a videotape revealed him having sex with a minor while attending the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
His climb back seemed secured by his role as presidential aide Sam Seaborn on “The West Wing” role, but he quit the show toward the end of its fourth season amid rumors of financial demands and a bruised ego.
Lowe politely declines to elaborate: “It all ends up being for the better and you move on, but you will always know you were part of real magic.”
The birthday bunch
Actress Olympia Dukakis is 73. Actor Danny Aiello is 71. Actor John Mahoney (“Frasier”) is 64. Musician Brian Wilson (the Beach Boys) is 62. Home-repair show host Bob Vila is 58. Singer Lionel Richie is 55. Actor John Goodman is 52. Singer Cyndi Lauper is 51. Actress Nicole Kidman is 37. Actor Peter Paige (“Queer as Folk”) is 30.