Rob Lowe is reflecting on one of his most memorable — and painful — auditions as a young actor.
During an appearance on Kevin Bacon’s podcast, “Six Degrees With Kevin Bacon,” the 59-year-old shared the story of his disastrous dance audition for the 1984 movie musical Footloose. The film famously starred Bacon, now 65, as Ren McCormack, a career-making role that catapulted him into fame.
“By the way I think it was to a Styx song of all things. And the end of the dance was a knee slide across the floor,” Lowe recalled. “And I hit my knees and slide across the floor into a lineup of [former Paramount Pictures CEO] Sherry Lansing, [screenwriter] Dean Pitchford, [producer] Craig Zadan.”
Lowe explained that the dance move caused his knee to “explode” and he was carried out on a stretcher. “Explodes!” the actor exclaimed. “Pop. And they take me out of the soundstage on a stretcher.”
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He continued, “Craig Zadan and the producers, who were friends of mine and were very pro-me doing this movie go up to me and go, ‘Hey man, it’s cool. At the end of the day, we really decided, we’re just going to hire a dancer for the part.’”
Lowe then addressed Bacon saying, “A week later they hire you,” and he recalled thinking, “‘Goddamn these guys! That’s a real actor!’” “Well, that is a great Hollywood story,” Bacon replied.
Kevin Bacon in “Footloose” Cover Images
Lowe recently shared another career mishap in which he accidentally texted Bradley Cooper when trying to congratulate Robery Downey Jr. on his Golden Globe win. “I’m so excited for him and so I text him, ‘So glad you won, that is the most beautiful acceptance speech I’ve heard in a long time. Boy, do you deserve it,’” the actor recalled earlier this month on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “I hit send and I realize, ‘Oh s–t. I just sent that to Bradley Cooper.’”
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He continued, “So then I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta make it better’ and I said, ‘No, no, I meant that for Robert Downey, Jr.,’” Lowe continued. “I’m like, ‘No! That’s even worse. Make the guy feel worse.’”
The actor chalked up the mistake to putting “the wrong numbers under the wrong names,” in his phone. After mistakenly texting Cooper, 49, again, Lowe said that luckily, the actor had a sense of humor about the situation. “He literally said, ‘No, no, no, I like living vicariously through these mistakes,’” he said of Cooper’s response.