Rob Lowe Shares His Candid Take on Taylor Swift’s Fame

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In a deep dive into his whirlwind ’80s fame, Rob Lowe offered a comparison to today’s celebrity culture. With a career that soared while he was just a teen, the 60-year-old perpetual heartthrob from the Brat Pack era understands the intense spotlight that superstars like Taylor Swift navigate today.

During an interview with People published Saturday, August 17, Lowe reminisced about his days on the set of St. Elmo’s Fire, where frenzied fans often forced him to shuttle to work in police cars. “I remember them having to bring me on and off the set in a police car, and that wasn’t the first or only time. People breaking into my grandparents’ house in Ohio thinking I was going to be there,” he shared.

The Hollywood icon’s encounters ranged from bizarre to downright invasive — from fans stealing his underwear to people setting up camp in the snow all night while he was on a ski vacation. These wild stories from his peak days, as he describes, were “mental” and beyond what most could fathom. “It’s the kind of stuff you look back on and go, did that really happen?” he mused to the publication.

Now, years later, Lowe looks back with a mix of gratitude and disbelief at his young fame. “I’m super grateful that I can say that I had that in my life, because very few people get to be that person. Every decade there’s a new crop and society demands it. It’s fun to watch that unfold having been there,” he said, adding, “Today it would be [Justin] Bieber, Taylor Swift, I don’t know if it’s Austin Butler, whoever it is today, there’s always going to be somebody living that life.”

Despite the frenzy of his past fame, the award winning actor feels a special kind of understanding for Swift, 34. He sees her towering fame as a supercharged version of what he once lived, noting, “I watch that, and it’s what I went through on gazillion steroids.”