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The Outsiders: 15 Big Differences Between The Movie & The Book

Richard gere’s oscar-winning 1980s romantic drama remake in the works, miles teller to star, the first omen's performance highlights a major horror double-standard.

• The Outsiders launched the careers of Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise, who went on to achieve global stardom in various genres.
• Rob Lowe's memories of Tom Cruise during The Outsiders suggest that Cruise has always had his hot-headed flair, even when he was relatively unknown.
• The remarkable cast of The Outsiders, including Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, and Ralph Macchio, went on to become A-list celebrities in their own right.

The Outsiders started Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise's careers, but Rob Lowe's memory of Tom Cruise while shooting The Outsiders is particularly humorous. Based on the iconic S.E Hinton novel of the same name, the story, set in the 1960s, chronicles the lives of two rival groups, the Greasers and the Socs, representing different socioeconomic backgrounds. Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise were among the young actors who brought this intense narrative to life. Lowe portrayed Sodapop Curtis, the charismatic middle brother of the Curtis family, and Tom Cruise played the role of Steve Randle, a tough and loyal member of the Greasers.

The movie was pivotal in launching the careers of its young cast members, including Lowe and Cruise. As The Outsiders actors embarked on their journey in Hollywood, they carved out incredible filmographies for themselves. Lowe became known for his roles in St. Elmo's Fire, Parks and Recreation, and The West Wing , showcasing his versatility across genres. Cruise, on the other hand, soared to international fame with blockbuster hits like Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, and Jerry Maguire . Their journey from The Outsiders to global stardom is a testament to their talent and dedication, but Rob Lowe's The Outsiders memories suggest Cruise has always been his eccentric self.

The 1983 movie The Outsiders, based on the 1967 book, is a faithful adaptation overall. But, as with most movie versions, there are big differences.

Rob Lowe Said Tom Cruise Wasn't Happy To Share A Hotel Room With Him

Lowe's experience with Cruise extended beyond the set, recalling their first stay at The Plaza Hotel: " First time I ever stayed at The Plaza Hotel. We check in and Tom finds out that we're sharing a room, and just goes ballistic . " This isn't exactly atypical of Cruise either, as he's been known to behave over the top from time to time, such as his rant on the set of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning when the crew wasn't following strict COVID-19 rules. However, before The Outsiders, Cruise was far from a household name, which makes it amusing that he's always had that hot-headed flair even when he was an unknown.

Lowe added that it was this mentality that helped Cruise become a movie star . The actor said, " To me, what's great about the story is, there's certain people who have always been who they are... I remember going, 'Wow, this guy is the real deal.' But at the end, you can't argue with the results, he's had his eye on the ball since day one. " This perspective from Lowe offers an objective and insightful look into the early career traits of Tom Cruise that have propelled him to immense success.

Rob Lowe's reflections on working with Tom Cruise during The Outsiders also shed light on Cruise's intense ambition and competitive spirit (via ET Online ). The West Wing actor revealed, "Tom was ambitious, never met anybody more ambitious, and I am ambitious, " emphasizing the competitive environment on set. He noted how even with a smaller role, Cruise's determination was palpable. Lowe also recounted a unique aspect of their preparation for the film, where director Francis Ford Coppola envisioned the cast as gymnasts :

Tom's part of Steve Randle was not a huge part, but Tom being Tom, he was ambitious. Francis also thought that we should all be gymnasts, for some reason. So we all had to learn to do backflips. Tom took it so seriously... He ended up being the only one who could do a backflip. It is in the movie The Outsiders for no reason. He runs out of the house and does a backflip for no reason, just to do it.

Lowe's TBT Photo Shows The Outsiders Cast Was Full Of Future A-List Actors

In a nostalgic throwback, Rob Lowe took to Instagram to share a photo highlighting the remarkable cast of The Outsiders (via Entertainment Weekly ). The post, featuring a hotel cast list, not only recalled the early days of these actors but also underlined how many of them went on to become A-list celebrities. This photo included The Outsiders actors like Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, and Ralph Macchio, alongside Lowe and Cruise, each of whom would later carve out their own unique path in Hollywood.

The Instagram post served as a reminder of the extraordinary talent pool present in The Outsiders . Patrick Swayze gained fame with Dirty Dancing , Matt Dillon with There's Something About Mary, Emilio Estevez with The Mighty Ducks , Diane Lane with Streets of Fire , and Ralph Macchio became a household name with The Karate Kid . These actors, along with Lowe and Cruise, have since been recognized for their diverse and impactful contributions to the film industry, demonstrating the enduring legacy of The Outsiders as a launching pad for their astonishing careers.

Where to Watch The Outsiders

Source: ET Online , Entertainment Weekly

Arts & Culture | January 31, 2023

S.E. Hinton Is Tired of Talking About ‘The Outsiders.’ No One Else Is

The author reflects on her classic 1967 novel, its 1983 film adaptation and its legacy today

Patrick Sauer

History Correspondent

In late October 2022, a big-time streaming star returned to the city where it all began for him. Ralph Macchio (most recently of “ Cobra Kai ” fame) was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to promote his memoir, Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me . Hosted by Magic City Books , the live conversation in the Art Deco auditorium at Will Rogers High School featured another pop culture icon: S.E. Hinton , the writer whose teenage words would forever be emblematic of young adult literature and whose most famous creation, The Outsiders , helped launch Macchio’s career some 40 years earlier.

Prior to the event, Hinton was quietly going about her business, wandering the school’s halls absent-mindedly. “It was funny when I first came into the building,” she said near the end of a phone conversation last Halloween, a week and a half after her appearance with Macchio. “It’s been a long time, so I was kind of looking around … and a woman came up and asked me, ‘Is this your first time inside the school?’ I said, ‘No, not really.’”

More than half a century ago, Susie Hinton (soon to be known by her gender-neutral pen name) was a student at Will Rogers, where she received a D in creative writing because class assignments were nowhere near as important to her as working out the plot and characters of The Outsiders . The story would come to define her life—even though these days she would rather discuss just about anything else.

“I am very tired of talking about [it],” says Hinton, now 74. “I don’t give speeches about it anymore. The thought of getting into it one more time is almost paralyzing. You’re lucky. This may be the last interview on The Outsiders I’ll ever give. … Oh god, for once, I’d like to discuss Rumble Fish .”

While Rumble Fish is certainly a fine book (and a terrific artsy film ), it isn’t ranked 32nd in PBS’s “ The Great American Read ” poll of the top 100 English-language novels. Over its 56-year lifespan, The Outsiders has sold more than 15 million copies , been published in more than 30 languages and never gone out of print. The 1967 book is a foundational text in the young adult fiction canon, and the 1983 movie version (featuring Macchio as 16-year-old Johnny Cade) plays an outsized role in bringing tourists to Hinton’s lifelong home of Tulsa.

Hinton has nine books to her name , from children’s picture books to a horror novel to a collection of intertwined short stories with adult characters to the coming-of-age works that built her literary career. But none of the others matches the ongoing cultural phenomenon that is The Outsiders . It’s still an English class staple, taught (and occasionally banned ) in middle and high schools across the country. The heartfelt movie adaptation has staying power, too. One of its ramshackle filming locations, the Curtis brothers’ home, opened to the public in 2019 as the Outsiders House Museum . And in 2021, the film underwent a 4K restoration that reinstated several beloved scenes from the book that failed to make the original cut.

Hinton may have said all she has to say about The Outsiders , but it remains an American classic, as relevant and beloved today as when it was published more than five decades ago.

The origins of The Outsiders

Writing was an oasis from a rough upbringing Hinton rarely mentions but did describe to the New York Times in 2005. As author Dinitia Smith wrote:

Ms. Hinton’s, father, Grady, was a door-to-door salesman, her mother, Lillian, an assembly-line worker. “My mother was physically and emotionally abusive,” Ms. Hinton said. “My father was an extremely cold man.”   It’s clearly a difficult admission to make, and one she has almost never made. The family attended a “fundamentalist, hellfire and brimstone” church, she said. “It turned me off religion.”

By the time she was 15, Hinton had already been churning out stories and poems for eight years. She wrote about what she knew: the ongoing battles between the haves and have-nots. In interviews over the years, Hinton described herself as an observer who grew up in North Tulsa “greaser” (slang for their greased-back hairstyles) territory but wasn’t beholden to any one group. She was a tomboy who loved to read and yearned for honest teenage representation.

The genesis for The Outsiders was an incident in which a friend of Hinton’s was jumped by a carload of upper crust “Socs” (short for “Socials”) and beaten up for being a greaser. The escalation in the high school cliques’ long-running rivalry fueled a creative burst that found the 16-year-old finishing the first draft in a week in 1966.

“What I was talking about was real,” Hinton says. “Books at that time for teenagers were ‘Mary Jane goes to prom,’ but [they] didn’t include sneaking in the liquor, which was the main point. Nobody was writing about what was going on in my high school: the social and class warfare.”

The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel told through the eyes of 14-year-old Ponyboy, the youngest of the three orphaned Curtis brothers. He’s a sensitive, Robert Frost -reciting soul whom Hinton once described as “the closest I’ve come to putting myself into a character.” She aimed for realism, so the Socs and greasers smoke and drink, chase girls, and fight.

The book covers two weeks in the chaotic lives of Ponyboy and his best friend, Johnny. The plotting is concrete and relatively sparse. In short order, Johnny kills a Soc who was trying to drown Ponyboy, forcing the greaser friends to go on the run. Seeking shelter in an abandoned church, the boys bond over cigarettes, sunsets and a yearning for life without socioeconomic unrest. Deciding to return home to the face the music, the outlaws become heroes, rescuing children from a burning building at great personal cost.

By the book’s end, three characters are dead, including Johnny and Dallas Winston, a rebellious East Coast transplant who goes down in a hail of police bullets. The violence is frank, as is the utter lack of nurturing adult figures. But what stands out is how much these tough, wrong-side-of-the-tracks teenagers care for one another. They share a depth of feeling and a fraternal love among young American men that hadn’t been displayed before Hinton put her experiences on paper.

“I’ve known many men in my life with an availability of compassion underneath that they’re afraid to show, which is not the case with Susie’s main characters,” says Rilla Askew , an author who has written multiple novels set in her home state of Oklahoma, including the award-winning Fire in Beulah . “They have a tenderness and a decency about them, and it’s probably not a coincidence that it was a young female author writing young male characters.”

Bringing the book to the public

Not long after Hinton finished the manuscript, a friend of a friend advised her to send it to an agent named Marilyn Marlow. In response, Marlow wrote that the novel, originally called A Different Sunset (other rejected titles include The Switch-Blade Boys and The Leather Jackets ), had “captured a certain spirit.” On Hinton’s last day of high school in 1966, she learned Viking Press wanted to publish her book. It came out in 1967—Hinton’s freshman year at the University of Tulsa—with “S.E.,” a gender-neutral name suggested by editor Velma Varner , on the cover. Susie Eloise went out and bought herself a Camaro.

The Outsiders: 50th Anniversary Edition

Celebrating 50 years of the novel that laid the groundwork for the young adult genre, this is the ultimate edition for fans of "The Outsiders."

Initially marketed as a dime-store paperback alongside books by pulp fiction writer Mickey Spillane and the like, The Outsiders saw sluggish sales. Eventually, Viking caught on that the book was selling well where teachers were teaching it. Students and educators kept sales growing year after year through word of mouth, proclaiming that this was the book in which teenagers could see themselves.

“I think The Outsiders is the biggest of all my books because I wrote it at the right time in my life,” Hinton says. “By the time I wrote [the companion novel] That Was Then, This Is Now four years later, I could well remember what it was like being 16, but it’s still not the same as being 16. The Outsiders still resonates because it captures how teenagers feel—the mix of over-the-top emotions and idealism.”

After years of turning down offers from film studios, Hinton eventually sold the rights to The Outsiders to Francis Ford Coppola , an Oscar-winning director in need of a hit. Soon, a large cast of fresh-faced young actors—a future “who’s who” of Hollywood—descended upon Tulsa. The movie would find a whole new audience for Hinton’s debut novel and permanently alter the city for the better.

Bringing The Outsiders to the screen

In 1972, Jo Ellen Misakian was a parent with a new job as a librarian at the Lone Star School in Fresno, California. She gave the book to her 13-year-old son, later telling the New York Times , “I had been so frustrated because the kids, the boys especially, didn’t read. Somehow, The Outsiders caught on.” Misakian decided the book should be turned into a movie, so she contacted a Fresno Bee newspaper columnist who pointed her to Parade magazine’s movie editor. The editor, in turn, suggested contacting Hinton, who never responded.

Undeterred, Misakian wrote a letter to Coppola, who had recently produced The Black Stallion , a 1979 film adapted from the classic 1941 children’s book. She pitched him on The Outsiders with an enclosed paperback copy of the novel. Luckily for her, she mistakenly sent it to his New York City office, where he received almost no fan mail. Coppola handed the book off to producing partner Don Roos, who found the cover illustration tacky and didn’t crack it for weeks, but eventually decided to give it ten whole pages on a flight to see if it was any good. Roos read it cover to cover. Not long after, he flew to Tulsa to meet with Hinton. She wasn’t dazzled by Coppola’s cinematic pedigree, including films like The Conversation , The Godfather and Apocalypse Now , but as Roos explained when The Outsiders was released in March 1983, “she likes horses and felt The Black Stallion showed we had some affinity for young adult fiction.”

Coppola began filming in March 1982, secure in knowing The Outsiders could be completed on the cheap. He’d just blown $26 million, a huge sum at the time, directing One From the Heart , a wayward musical that grossed a mere $636,796 at the box office and eventually bankrupted Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios . The director found salvation in the Socs and the greasers, once saying , “I used to be a great camp counselor, and the idea of being with half a dozen kids in the country and making a movie seemed like being a camp counselor again. It would be a breath of fresh air. I’d forget my troubles and have some laughs.”

A wide-net call that auditioned virtually every known Hollywood actor— a grueling process for all—produced a cast that is, in hindsight, remarkable for its talent: Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, C. Thomas Howell, Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. The nimble, stripped-down nature of shooting The Outsiders allowed for a lot of back and forth and a lot of down time, creating a real bond between the actors (or the greasers, anyway).

“It always does something when you take a group of people out of their own element and stick them in a new space. It forces them to turn to each other for support,” says 56-year-old Howell , who played narrator Ponyboy Curtis and will soon appear in the Netflix series “ Obliterated .” “On the weekends, we were playing football and basketball against the Socs. Coppola set it up in good nature, but subconsciously and psychologically, it was creating a real competitive atmosphere and a dislike that wasn’t malicious by any means but definitely gave us a needed sense of rivalry.”

Photojournalist David Burnett saw the insular vibes firsthand after being asked to take publicity stills. Photos that weren’t used for promotion at the time were placed in a reject box and stashed away in a file cabinet. Some 35 years later, Burnett, now 76, heard about the opening of the Outsiders House Museum in Tulsa and offered to dig up and donate some snapshots. This, in turn, led to Burnett’s new book, The Outsiders: Rare and Unseen , a collection of long-shelved stills of the bright young cast. Burnett, whose illustrious career has taken him all over the globe, shooting events like the liftoff of Apollo 11 , the Iranian Revolution and a Bob Marley tour , has fond recollections of his week in Oklahoma.

“It was a very low-key operation, so I just hung around, and every time an actor had a break, I’d ask them for five minutes to get a few shots,” he says. “Nobody knew who these guys were, so they were happy to do it. They were all striving to do something interesting and career-building in ways they didn’t even realize.”

The Outsiders: Rare and Unseen

Photography by David Burnett. This book showcases never-before-seen photos from the set of the 1983 film.

Burnett adds, “If The Outsiders were filmed today, they would be bulkier and in peak physical shape, but what the movie called for was a cast of skinny, innocent-looking, young working-class boys. Tom Cruise didn’t even hide his gnarly teeth . [These were] different times. Being part of it was a real pleasure.”

Howell recalls Hinton’s presence as an important part of the process. She offered wardrobe and hairstyle tips, answered questions about Tulsa back in the day, gave personal insights, offered character motivations, explained the differences in the everyday lives of Socs and greasers, and generally acted as the group’s den mother. She still keeps in touch with most of her “guys,” which is why she acquiesced to Macchio’s overtures to join him on stage last fall.

Though neither Hinton nor Coppola received a screenplay credit—it went solely to Kathleen Rowell , an early drafter of the project—the duo shaped the story and the scenes to keep it authentic to the author’s world.

As a reward for getting the book into Coppola’s hands, Misakian and her Fresno community got their own early screening attended by cast members including Howell, Macchio and pop star-turned-Soc Leif Garrett . Misakian received a standing ovation, calling the experience a fairy tale—and her story didn’t end there.

In September 2021, the name “Jo Ellen Misakian” went up in lights on Tulsa’s Circle Cinema marquee, where the librarian appeared as a guest star at a special screening of the movie she made possible. Misakian also autographed the celebrity wall inside the Curtis brothers’ home, a gathering place for Hinton devotees that was rebuilt by a former hip-hop luminary repaying The Outsiders for helping to save his life.

Preserving The Outsiders ’ legacy

Located in North Tulsa’s Crutchfield neighborhood at 731 North St. Louis Avenue, the 1920s Craftsman bungalow looks more or less the same as it did when Coppola used it as the home of Darry, Sodapop and Ponyboy Curtis. It’s a simple one-story dwelling, a cream-and-white wooden abode featuring a concrete porch dotted with midcentury metal porch furniture to ride out those steamy Oklahoma nights. A rusty chain-link fence surrounds the modest property, where the 1949 Plymouth Special De Luxe driven by Two-Bit Matthews (played by Estevez) rests on the lawn and personalized donation bricks encourage guests to “ stay gold .”

In 2009, Danny Boy O’Connor , whose defunct hip-hop group House of Pain hit it big with “ Jump Around ” in 1992, was touring in Tulsa when inspiration struck. He paid a cabbie $100 to drive him around in search of Outsiders filming locations. Discovering that the Curtis brothers’ house still existed led him to found the Delta Bravo Urban Exploration Team (“Delta Bravo” sounded less corny than “Danny Boy,” he thought), a group of online friends who make pilgrimages to pop culture and true crime sites to photograph them for posterity. It was a way to reconnect with his life, which had spiraled into the abyss after House of Pain broke up in the mid-1990s.

O’Connor was born into a rough Brooklyn life. His father was in and out of prison and would eventually die drunk on the street, he says. After remarrying, his mother moved her son to Los Angeles for a fresh start, but two years later, his alcoholic stepfather died of cirrhosis of the liver. It was the type of upbringing that would culminate in the hip-hop artist burning through millions of dollars on alcohol and drugs.

The young O’Connor found solace in The Outsiders ’ story of orphans and brotherly sensitivity. Unable to afford the house when he first encountered it, he sprang into action and bought it when he saw it go up for sale in 2015.

“If I didn’t save the [house], I knew I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life,” says O’Connor. The property was in terrible condition, he recalls, likening its look to the home of the serial killer in David Fincher’s Se7en . He didn’t have the $150,000 it would take to turn it into a livable home; despite the fact that his only memorabilia from the film was a poster, he decided to turn it into a museum. Preserving the Curtis brothers’ home became his reason for being, a chance to give back and be of service in his new surroundings. Before he undertook the project, however, he needed to connect with Hinton.

“Danny called and asked if we could meet up. I didn’t know anything about his musical career, or even what he looked like, but I knew by the end of lunch that we were going to end up close friends,” Hinton says. “He asked if I had any interest in buying the house. I said, ‘God no, I can barely keep up with my own house,’ but I told him to go ahead if he wanted to.”

Hinton gave more than her blessing. She made the first large donation, $10,000, and provided O’Connor with a brown leather jacket worn by both Dillon and Howell in the film. O’Connor’s original estimate was that it would take six months to get the museum up and running. It took more than three years and $175,000, but for all involved, it was a labor of love.

Today, the 1,400-square-foot interior is filled with furniture, memorabilia, paintings, foreign editions, Burnett’s photographs, multiple switchblades, wardrobe pieces like Estevez’s sleeveless Mickey Mouse shirt (and a faux chocolate cake to boot), and Ponyboy’s desk. An obscure period detail honors another famed Oklahoman: a 1958 record album of Mickey Mantle’s favorite hits (fortunately not sung by the Yankee slugger).

In August 2019, the Outsiders House Museum officially opened its doors, welcoming school groups during the week and the general public on the weekends. O’Connor estimates that some 20,000 people visited in 2022—a sizable uptick from the previous pandemic-plagued years. Private tours allow docents like Donnie Rich to explain their personal connections to the book. As a teenager who didn’t do the reading for class, Rich says he knocked on Hinton’s door in an unsuccessful attempt to secure her help with a book report on what he calls the “Oklahoma Bible.” The museum also hosts concerts, movie screenings and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. True Curtis brother diehards can even crash across the street at the Greaser Hideout Airbnb or, for the full experience, in the still-vacant lot where Macchio’s Johnny slept under a pile of newspapers.

“Danny has done a great job with the Outsiders House,” says Hinton. “People come from all over the United States, and even the world. He said teenage girls have walked in and burst into tears. It floors me.”

For O’Connor, the museum has been a life-changing experience, offering a sense of direction as well as a literal place to live. He relocated from Los Angeles to be the full-time keeper of The Outsiders ’ flame. He was integral in the publishing of Burnett’s photo book and recently signed a contract with Penguin to write the film’s oral history. Nearly everyone from The Outsiders , extras and big stars alike, have dropped by the museum (excluding Cruise, at least so far). So have fanboys like musician Jack White, Leonardo DiCaprio (while filming Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon ) and the members of Green Day. O’Connor is such a fixture around Tulsa that Mayor G.T. Bynum gave him a key to the city.

Hinton’s life today

Apart from a few years spent in Northern California, Hinton never left Tulsa. She still lives in the house where she and her husband, David Inhofe, a software engineer by trade, raised their son, Nick Inhofe, who now works as an audio engineer in the movie business. She’s down to earth and not wild about discussing herself (Hinton makes it abundantly clear there will “never be a memoir”), but she also chats with fans on Twitter and in the neighborhood writ large. Tulsa provided all she ever needed, and she’s comfortably woven into the fabric of the community, walking unknown through the halls of her alma mater before bringing the local house down.

“I still get recognized sometimes at the grocery store. It’s not a J.D. Salinger situation. I haven’t got the temperament for that or the talent to deserve it,” says Hinton, adding dryly, “You might not know it from reading my books, but my sense of humor is a strong part of my personality.”

Teresa Miller can attest to Hinton’s fun-loving, grounded personality, as well as her central role in the local literary scene. In 1994, Miller founded the Center for Poets and Writers at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. She spent two decades running it and hosting the PBS television show “ Writing Out Loud .” Along the way, she and Hinton became professional colleagues and close friends—but before they even met, Miller, 70, was thrilled that somebody had upended the standard perception of who Oklahomans are.

Miller explains, “I come from a little Cherokee community called Tahlequah and began working in Tulsa before moving here decades ago, so I’ve lived both a rural and urban life. Growing up, Oklahoma was known for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and The Grapes of Wrath , both of which my father hated because of the Okie stereotypes.”

She adds, “ The Outsiders changed that. It took the Oklahoma story to a different level. [Hinton] showed Tulsa as a regular city with regular city problems and handled it in a unique but universal way. She wrote a [novel about] Oklahoma that had nothing to do with singing cowboys or the Joads . It didn’t eliminate the stereotypes … but The Outsiders and Susie’s subsequent books changed how the outside world viewed us and even how we viewed ourselves.”

It certainly changed how Okie transplant O’Connor sees himself. It’s become his life’s work—and he’s just getting started. Renovations are underway at the iconic DX gas station featured in the film, and he’s aiming to raise enough money to restore other abandoned locales like the Rexall Drug Store . He also has designs on something bigger for his favorite author.

“I want to open, for lack of a better name, the S.E. Hinton Museum, which she absolutely hates,” says O’Connor. (Hinton replies, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”)

The former hip-hop star adds, “I was lost after House of Pain. [Hinton’s] brilliant work gave me purpose. Bringing her legacy to the people is what I’m meant to do.”

If O’Connor’s vision ever comes to fruition, it will honor Hinton’s full literary career, not just the book that put her on the map. At the end of the day, though, the author understands the significance of The Outsiders .

“I’m known best for the first thing I’ve written, but it’s better than not being known at all,” she says. “I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

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Patrick Sauer | | READ MORE

Raised in Billings, Montana,  Patrick Sauer  is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer who primarily covers sports, history and sports history. His work has appeared in the New York Times , Smithsonian , Defector , Los Angeles Times , Montana Quarterly and countless publications that no longer exist.

'The Outsiders' Cast and Character Guide (And What They're Doing Now)

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The Outsiders are celebrating their 40th anniversary. The coming-of-age story directed by Francis Ford Coppola ( The Godfather ) was released in March 1983. It featured an ensemble cast of up-and-coming talent who became Hollywood's biggest stars. Based on the book by S.E. Hinton , the film was a critical and financial success. It has earned a cult following thanks to its impressive ensemble, Coppola’s direction, and the film's source material was a fixture in many high school curriculums for years. Here’s a look at the cast of The Outsiders three decades after the film's debut.

Related: What ‘The Outsiders’ Gets About Teens That Other Brat Pack Movies Don't

C. Thomas Howell as Ponyboy Curtis

C. Thomas Howell stars as Ponyboy Curtis, the youngest of the Curtis children who are raised by their eldest brother Darrel after their parents died. Born in the poor slums of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Pony and his fellow “Greaser” friend Johnny are constantly harassed by the “Soc” rich kids. When Johnny kills a Soc in self-defense, he and Ponyboy go on the run.

Howell made his film debut in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial , before making his breakthrough as the lead in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders . Howell would star in cult classics Red Dawn and The Hitcher . Alongside his film work, Howell was also a fixture on TV screens, with notable turns as unpredictable LAPD officer Bill “Dewey Dudek” in the TNT drama Southland and as serial killer The Boston Reaper in Criminal Minds . Howell will next be seen in cinemas in the upcoming biopic Reagan starring Dennis Quaid and on TV screens in the Netflix series Obliterated by the creators of Cobra Kai .

Matt Dillon as Dallas “Dally” Winston

Matt Dillon stars as Dallas “Dally Winston, a Greaser and criminal whose violent tendencies are matched by his intense loyalty to his friends. Dallas helps Ponyboy and Johnny on the run and always carries an unloaded gun in his pocket.

Dillon debuted in the coming-of-age crime thriller Over the Edge , with his acclaimed performance leading to roles in successful teen comedies Little Darlings and My Bodyguard . Dillon would go on to be cast by Francis Ford Coppola in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish , both adaptations of S.E. Hinton's novels. Dillon would win critical acclaim for his performance in Drugstore Cowboy . He also received an Oscar nomination for his performance in Crash . Dillon will next be seen in the Wes Anderson film Asteroid City and the Apple TV+ series High Desert .

Ralph Macchio as Johnny Cade

Ralph Macchio stars as Johnny Cade, Ponyboy’s best friend. Small in stature, Johnny is constantly tormented and picked on by the Socs, who scarred him before events in the film. As a result, the fearful and paranoid Johnny carries a switchblade wherever he goes, a weapon he will use to kill in self-defense when he and Ponyboy are set upon again by the Socs.

While The Outsiders was the breakthrough film for Ralph Macchio, it would be his next movie, The Karate Kid , that made him a star, resulting in a cultural phenomenon. Between waxing on and off, Macchio starred in the music drama Crossroads and the hit comedy My Cousin Vinny . Starring roles for Macchio were few and far between, however, as the star focused on family life and the theater. Macchio will next be seen in the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai , where he reprises the role that defined his career, Daniel LaRusso.

Patrick Swayze as Darrel Curtis

Patrick Swayze stars as Darrel “Darry” Curtis, the oldest brother of the Curtis family who has taken on the responsibility of breadwinner after their parents died. He is stern and protective of his brothers, especially Ponyboy, who he urges to take school seriously and go to college, an opportunity he and his middle brother SodaPop didn’t have.

The late Patrick Swayze appeared on stage and TV before landing his breakthrough role in The Outsiders . After receiving acclaim for the Civil War miniseries North and South , Swayze would star in Dirty Dancing , a box office success propelling Swayze to superstar status. He would continue to be a household name with performances in the action thriller Roadhouse and the supernatural love story Ghost . Swayze later returned to the action genre in the Kathryn Bigelow film Point Break , where he starred alongside Keanu Reeves . Swayze’s final role before his passing was in the crime series The Beast , where Swayze played a hard-edged FBI agent, which resulted in career-best notices for the actor.

Rob Lowe as Sodapop Curtis

Rob Lowe stars as Sodapop Curtis, the middle sibling of the Curtis family who is raised by his older brother Darrel. Sodapop dropped out of high school and worked at the local gas station with his best friend, Steve.

Lowe’s breakout role was Sodapop, and in that same year, he also received a Golden Globe Award nomination for the TV movie Thursday’s Child . Lowe would next star in the Joel Schumacher movie St. Elmo’s Fire , from which the media named him a member of the young actor collective “The Brat Pack.” Lowe later reunited with his The Outsiders co-star Patrick Swayze in the ice-hockey drama Youngblood . As the ‘90s began, Lowe would prove his worth as a comedic actor in the Mike Myers films Wayne’s World and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me . A productive and acclaimed career in TV would keep Lowe’s star burning bright, with his role as Sam Seaborn in the Aaron Sorkin series The West Wing earning Lowe's career-best acclaim and several nominations. Lowe would continue to be a prolific presence in film and TV, with notable performances in the drama Brothers & Sisters , the NBC comedy Parks & Recreation , and a nearly unrecognizable turn in Behind the Candelabra . Lowe currently stars in the Fox procedural drama 9-1-1: Lone Star and will next be seen in the Netflix comedy Unstable, where he stars alongside his son John Owen Lowe .

Emilio Estevez as Two-Bit Matthews

Emilio Estevez stars as Two-Bit Matthews, a lad back member of the Greasers who has a love for all things Mickey Mouse. The son of actor Martin Sheen , Emilio Estevez made his film debut alongside his father in the crime drama In the Custody of Strangers . Estevez would follow with his memorable supporting role in The Outsiders, which quickly led to gigs in the cult sci-fi classic Repo Man , and the John Hughes teen classic The Breakfast Club . Estevez would continue cementing his status as a movie star with the film series Young Guns and The Mighty Ducks .

Estevez would become more prolific behind the camera as a writer and director, receiving solid notices for the ensemble drama Bobby and The Way , which starred Martin Sheen. Estevez is working on the next installment of the Young series titled Guns 3: Alias Billy the Kid , in which he will direct, write, and star.

Related: Tom Cruise's Only Directing Credit Is From a Neo-Noir Series You've Probably Never Heard of

Tom Cruise as Steve Randle

Tom Cruise stars as Steve Randle, a Greaser who, although cocky and rude at times, cares deeply for his friends, especially SodaPop, who he works with at the gas station.

Cruise is arguably the biggest movie star in the world. He first made his mark in the 1981 thriller Taps , where he played a crazed military academy student. His breakthrough star role followed this in Risky Business , a teen sex comedy in which he played a high-achieving high school who fell in love with a prostitute. Cruise would then be cast in Top Gun , portraying cocky Navy pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a role that blasted the then 24-year-old Cruise into the stratosphere. Cruise would go on to become the box office king with movies such as Rain Man , Minority Report , and War of the Worlds , as well as scoring Oscar nominations for Born on the Fourth of July , Jerry Maguire , and Magnolia .

During this time, Cruise would headline and produce the Mission: Impossible film series, resulting in a billion-dollar franchise that grows strong with every new installment. Cruise’s return as Maverick in the 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick resulted in the actor's biggest box office to date and multiple Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture. Cruise’s next film is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One .

Diane Lane as Sherri “Cherry” Valance

Diane Lane stars as Sherri Valance, a Soc girl and cheerleader who is sensitive and kind to Ponyboy. It is Sherri’s boyfriend, Bob, who attacks Ponyboy and Johnny, resulting in Johnny killing him in self-defense.

Diane Lane first made her mark in 1983 with pivotal roles in The Outsiders and Rumble Fish , starring alongside Matt Dillon in both films. Lane would later receive an Emmy nomination for her role in the western miniseries Lonesome Dove which starred Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones .

Lane’s career would continue to go from strength to strength, earning an Oscar nomination for Unfaithful, in which she portrayed an adulterous wife alongside Richard Gere. Throughout the 1990s, Lane would take on supporting roles in Chaplin and Judge Dredd while taking on lead roles in acclaimed indies My New Gun and A Walk on the Moon . Lane will next be seen in season two of Ryan Murphy ’s Feud series titled Feud: Capote’s Women and the Netflix miniseries A Man in Full alongside Jeff Daniels .

• Francis Ford Coppola

The Unexpected Way Rob Lowe And Tom Cruise Prepared For Their Roles In The Outsiders

The filming of Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of "The Outsiders" in 1982 would forever remain a seminal moment for the teenage and young adult cast members. Several major actors from the movie would become movie stars, including Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, and Tom Cruise (per CBS News ). Robert Downey Jr., Mickey Rourke, and Dennis Quaid were all considered as well, meaning that even those rejected during Coppola's audition process would be viable film leads within the next decade (via The Guardian ).

Coppola deliberately chose to make the production a collaborative process with his young cast. He asked Ralph Macchio to live on only five dollars a day so he could understand his character better, and Coppola also videotaped the entire film before shooting, showing the results to the ensemble so they could look for ways to improve their performances (per  Variety ).

But the cast still didn't know the extent to which Coppola wanted them to prepare for their roles.

Lowe and Cruise spent the night at a greaser couple's house

Rob Lowe was actually ready to quit acting before he landed "The Outsiders," certain that he wouldn't be able to have a steady acting career, according to  Vanity Fair . Cruise meanwhile had only appeared in three films so far: "Endless Love," "Losin' It," and "Taps" (via IMDb ). Both had some experience but neither of them expected Coppola's request for the cast to go spend the night in Tulsa, Oklahoma with real greasers the crew had found. 

Despite being paired with Cruise, who was always game for any task on the set, Lowe confessed that "the thought of bunking with a Hell's Angel that some production assistant found off the street has got me rattled" (per Vanity Fair).

However, Lowe was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and welcoming the greaser couple was. The pair served them dinner, and they swapped stories about acting and growing up in Oklahoma, Lowe recalled to Vanity Fair. Cruise and Lowe spent the night in their house, and Lowe ultimately came out of the experience feeling that he could make it as an actor after all. The next 40 years of success, including "St. Elmo's Fire" and "Parks & Recreation," would prove his intuition right.

Rob Lowe Threw Back To That Time He And Tom Cruise Got To Live In A Hotel While Filming The Outsiders 40 Years Ago

Most famous group of hotel guests ever?

Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise have had very different careers. Lowe was a member of the Brat Pack , participating in teen movies of the '80s, before transitioning to television with hits like The West Wing and Parks and Recreation . Cruise became one of the biggest movie stars in the world, focusing on director-driven projects before solidifying himself as a certified action star. However, back in 1983, their career paths intersected when they both starred in Francis Ford Coppola ’s The Outsiders . Lowe recently posted a throwback to that moment in time, specifically showing that he and Cruise shared a hotel floor while shooting the film. 

The St. Elmo’s Fire alum posted a recent photo on Instagram that shows the hotel assignments amid filming on The Outsiders . The assignment sheet was typewritten (a fact that now indicates the time period) and featured some very notable names like Patrick Swayze and Matt Dillon. The photo also shows that Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe were just a stone throw away from each other during production. You can see the photo below:

A post shared by Rob Lowe (@roblowe) A photo posted by on

While it’s hard to imagine so many A-listers in one hotel at the same time, in the '80s it probably didn’t seem that way. The Outsiders caught the celebs right before they hit it big and essentially launched their careers . Not many of them were very established at the time, and were all considered to be “up and comers.” That freshness is part of the reason the film feels like such a cultural touchstone. It perfectly captures the '80s style of movie-making and just so happens to include stars that became some of the most important of the decade. 

It seems Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise spent a lot of time together while making the flick. The Unstable actor previously recounted that they once stayed in strangers' homes together in order to get a better feel for their characters. Today, heartthrobs probably couldn’t travel anywhere together without massive media attention. But back then, they were just two young actors doing character research at the insistence of their director. I’m sure the close-quarters aspect of this production resulted in many great anecdotes that I'm just dying to hear more about. 

It’s been 40 years since The Outsiders came out but, based on this post from Rob Lowe, he still thinks about this time in his life fondly. The source text for the movie has long been required reading for schools across the country. And as a result, many continue to discover the magic of the classic every year. The cast's young '80s stars have moved on to bigger and better things , but they all have a shared history of life on Floor 6 in a hotel while filming one of the most iconic movies of all time. I love that Lowe shared this cool memory with his fans and that he still kept the assignment sheet after all these years. 

You can check out The Outsiders , as it's currently available to stream with a Max subscription . If you're a fan nostalgic for other films of the decade, read about the best '80s movies and how to watch them .

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Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise slept in a stranger's basement while making 'The Outsiders'

Imagine having two of Hollywood’s hottest up-and-coming stars living under your roof. For a select few people in Oklahoma, it happened.

While appearing on Monday’s episode of “The Kelly Clarkson Show” to promote his new podcast, “Literally! With Rob Lowe,” the actor recalled how he and Tom Cruise spent a night in a stranger’s house while they shot the 1983 film “The Outsiders.”

“What happened was, when we were doing ‘The Outsiders,’ we’re 18 and 19 years old. It’s Francis Ford Coppola, the director, who directed ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Apocalypse Now' ... and in his effort to make us more authentic as greasers, as sort of tough Tulsa, sort of wrong side of the tracks guys, (he) found a bunch of different actual greasers who were now grown-up adults and made us go spend the night and live with them,” Lowe said.

“They came to us at rehearsal and like, ‘OK, so, we’re gonna divide you up. Rob, Tom, you guys are gonna go stay with Bill and Sandy whoever.’ And we just went to their little house and had dinner.”

Lowe, 56, said he and Cruise, 58, were at a loss while trying to process the fact they were getting some shut-eye under a total stranger’s roof, while he was almost certain Coppola didn’t have to deal with such unusual conditions.

“Tom and I ended up in the basement in two cots and we’re like, ‘We don’t know these people,’” he said.

“I mean, who vetted them? Really? Do you think Francis Ford Coppola spent a lot of time vetting these people? I can tell you, he didn’t. He was with an espresso and watching some fancy Fellini movie and went, ‘Yeah, yeah that sounds great’ and went back to his espresso.”

It’s not the only “Outsiders” story Lowe has about rooming with Cruise, either. In an April interview with the “Armchair Expert” podcast, he recalled the time Cruise went “ballistic” when he discovered he and Lowe would have to share a hotel room after they flew to New York City to audition for the film.

"To me, what’s great about the story is, there’s certain people who have always been who they are, and that element of them has powered them to where they are today and the rest is history," he said. “And the notion that an 18-year-old actor with a walk-on part in ‘Endless Love’ and, like, a seventh lead in ‘Taps’ could have that kind of like wherewithal."

"I remember going, 'Wow, this guy is the real deal,'" Lowe added. "I mean it made me laugh, it was gnarly. But in the end of it, you can't argue with the results. He’s had his eye on the ball since day one."

Drew Weisholtz is a reporter for TODAY Digital, focusing on pop culture, nostalgia and trending stories. He has seen every episode of “Saved by the Bell” at least 50 times, longs to perfect the crane kick from “The Karate Kid” and performs stand-up comedy, while also cheering on the New York Yankees and New York Giants. A graduate of Rutgers University, he is the married father of two kids who believe he is ridiculous.

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The Outsiders

Film Details

• Articles & Reviews

Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, francis ford coppola, c. thomas howell, matt dillon, patrick swayze, emilio estevez, technical specs.

Coming-of-age drama about teenagers growing up in the 1950s Midwest. The youngest of three orphaned brothers gets into trouble with the law after he and his "greaser" friend are attacked at a park by the rich "socs."

Leif Garrett

Ralph Macchio

Daniel r suhart, tom hillman, gailard sartain, john c. meier, hugh wailkinshaw, william smith, glenn withrow, linda nystedt.

Sofia Coppola

Michelle meyrink.

Teresa Wilkerson Hunt

Brent beesley, darren dalton.

S. E. Hinton

Millie z alexich, mitchell amundsen, william asher, james austin, jean autrey, richard beggs, jeffrey block, marge bowers, martin bresin, karen a brocco, emmett brown, stephen h burum, david allan coe, ronald colby, carmine coppola, gian-carlo coppola, roman coppola, elliot davis, steve m davison, roger dietz, tony dingman, dennis dion, walt disney, gordon ecker, gary fettis, teri fettis, wayne fitzgerald, gray frederickson, jamie freitag, ralph gerling, anne goursaud, janet hirshenson, buddy joe hooker, teresa hunt, richard hymns, walla works inc, jane iredale, chris lebenzon, michael lehmann, barbara lucey, douglas t madison, michelle manning, david marconi, connie mccord, anthony r milch, michael minkler, ernie misko, kathleen misko, van morrison, anahid nazarian, lloyd nelson, bonna newman, dee dee petty, reid rondell, kathleen knutsen rowell, david smith, robert spurlock, dave stewart, robert swarthe, dean tavoularis, david valdes, jane vickerella, wayne wagner, laurel walter, james e webb, scott wilder, little stevie wonder, the outsiders on dvd.

When The Outsiders was first released, a critic from the Los Angeles Times noted that "audiences who are not (S.E.) Hinton experts may be treading water during the first 20 minutes, desperately trying to keep half a dozen identities and family relationships straight." Hinton initially began writing the book when she was 15 and finished it when she was 17; the novel is in many respects what one might expect from a 15 year-old author. Naive and romanticized, The Outsiders attempts to uncover something poetic in the alien world of troubled teenage boys who seem at once dangerous and sensitive. Though Hinton addresses a valid need for positive role models for teenagers, she has created idealized males who are hypersensitive, know their innermost feelings and do not hesitate to express them. Ponyboy is the most obvious example of this stylization, particularly in the scene where he reads a passage from his favorite book, Gone With the Wind , to his pal Johnny Cade (Ralph Macchio) while they hide out in a run-down church.

Whether intentional or not, scenes like the above clearly evoke the angst-ridden emotions of Rebel Without A Cause (1955); an idea repeatedly reinforced by the presence of Sal Mineo look-alike, Ralph Macchio. Originally prompted to make The Outsiders by an elementary school librarian and her students who sent Coppola a petition to bring the novel to life, the director set out to make a nostalgic fifties film. In an attempt to heighten the film's emotional impact, Coppola uses nature as a dramatic force; sudden storms, sunsets and sunrises are conjured up swiftly and disappear just as quickly, much like the turmoil in the teenagers' lives. And whereas Nicholas Ray used Cinemascope in Rebel Without A Cause to express the alienated viewpoint of his young protagonists (remember the sequence in the police station when you can't see the heads or faces of any of the adult characters?), Coppola goes a step further in The Outsiders and eliminates all adults from the narrative, all the better to study these scarred but passionate teenagers in their own element.

The theme of teenage alienation was driven home dramatically by Coppola during the rehearsal process. After a massive "cattle call" of over 300 male teens, which was eventually whittled down to a primary cast of "Greasers" and "Socs", the two groups were then separated. "'Socs' were treated like princes," says Coppola, "and 'Greasers' the opposite. Only occasionally did they meet, in a competitive sport, so we could fan their distrust and dislike." For weeks, the latter group prepared meals together, improvised playing a family, practiced tai chi, and played touch football - activities that bonded the "Greasers" together and separated them from their snooty counterparts. Though the process worked, there were rumors that Coppola was having financial problems, which might explain the unusually long pre-production phase for the actors. Rob Lowe recalls "Apparently there were problems with financing...(Coppola) was on the phone with his wife saying, 'Don't let them in the gate! Don't - wait, hold on a second - Action!'"

The Outsiders earned Coppola mixed reviews when the film was finally released. Praised for his beautiful technique, as much as he was criticized for his romanticized portrayal of teen life, evidence of Coppola's genuine achievement lies in these uneven reviews. The novel, despite its unsophisticated and often sentimental viewpoint, struck a chord with young readers because it was written by one of their own. So, in all fairness, it should be pointed out that the failings of the movie are really the failings of the novel. But as one insightful critic noted, "none of this will make the slightest difference to any true Hinton fan, who will find the impassioned hyperbole exactly right for this magnetic classic."

Director: Francis Ford Coppola Producer: Gian-Carlo Coppola, Gray Frederickson, Fred Roos Screenplay: S.E. Hinton, Kathleen Rowell Art Direction: Gary Fettis Cinematography: Stephen H. Burum Costume Design: Marjorie Bowers Film Editing: Anne Goursaud Original Music: Carmine Coppola Principal Cast: C. Thomas Howell (Ponyboy Curtis), Matt Dillon (Dallas Winston), Ralph Macchio (Johnny Cade), Patrick Swayze (Darrel Curtis), Rob Lowe (Sodapop Curtis). C-92m.

By Bill Goodman

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States on Video November 30, 1999

Released in United States September 1991

Released in United States Spring March 25, 1983

Re-released in United States September 9, 2005

Shown at San Sebastian International Film Festival September 19-28, 1991.

Released in United States September 1991 (Shown at San Sebastian International Film Festival September 19-28, 1991.)

Re-released in United States September 9, 2005 (as "The Outsiders: The Complete Novel"; Coppola's director's cut reintegrates 22 minutes of character-building footage, including a new beginnning and ending more true to the book as well as a new rock-n-roll soundtrack featuring six songs from Elvis Presley; New York City)

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Rob Lowe reveals why Tom Cruise was so intense to work and compete with

"never met anybody more ambitious," rob says of his then-unknown co-star in 1983's the outsiders.

Rob Lowe left nothing off the table in a new interview for iHeartPodcast "Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi," especially while discussing his experience on  The Outsiders .

Based on S.E. Hinton's YA novel of the same name and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the 1983 crime drama was Rob's debut, pairing him opposite other future screen icons like Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, and  Tom Cruise .

His experience with the latter was the most intense, as the 59-year-old entered a discussion about competing with his co-star and their cycle of "one-upping" each other.

"[Tom was] ambitious, never met anybody more ambitious, and I am ambitious," Rob said. "There was a lot of one-upping going on…Tom's part of Steve Randle was not a huge part, but Tom being Tom, he was ambitious."

MORE: Rob Lowe's son John makes emotional confession about dad's support amid sobriety journey

MORE:  How Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's daughter Suri reacted to her mom's "Dawson's Creek" role

Host Bruce asked about the infamous rumor that the future Oscar-nominee had removed a cap from his front tooth for the part, and Rob confirmed that it was indeed true .

The 9-1-1 actor also added: "Francis also thought that we should all be gymnasts, for some reason. So we all had to learn to do backflips.

"Tom took it so seriously. If you see The Outsiders , the movie is playing and the movie just stops dead and Tom does a backflip off of a car."

With its cast full of future Hollywood heavyweights, the film emerged as a success after release, becoming a critical darling and a minor box office hit.

MORE: Rob Lowe gushes over wife Sheryl Berkoff in sentimental anniversary post - a look back at their marriage

MORE:  Tom Cruise's London move was influenced by his daughter with ex Nicole Kidman

It has since become a classic, and is considered the first of the so-called Brat Pack films of the 1980s , an umbrella term which featured the same few young stars frequently appearing in teen coming-of-age movies of the time.

Rob was one of those considered part of the unofficial cinematic club, alongside Outsiders co-star Emilio Estevez, plus Anthony Michael Hall, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, and Molly Ringwald.

While the term itself has received mixed reception from its stars, having deemed it a means to "pigeonhole" them , the movies of that era have largely become classics of the genre, including Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire,  and  Pretty in Pink , to name a few.

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• What Is Cinema?

Rob Lowe on His Early Years as an Actor, His Friendships with the Sheens and Tom Cruise, and the Movie that Launched His Career, The Outsiders

By Vanity Fair

*Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.*New York, N.Y.—“We competed to see who could play harder, then show up for work and still kick ass,” Rob Lowe tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Vanessa Grigoriadis about filming Masquerade in the Hamptons in 1987 while his then buddy, Charlie Sheen, was filming Wall Street. “The verdict: Charlie by a nose.” Lowe tells Grigoriadis that his friends growing up in Malibu pre-fame were the “uncool” guys who didn’t surf: Chris Penn and Charlie Sheen. “The cool girls in Malibu had no time for me,” Lowe says. “I wasn’t a beach volleyball player, a surfer, or a quasi-burnout.” However, as Lowe recounts in a Vanity Fair excerpt from his upcoming autobiography, it would be a mere five years after plotting their acting careers in the Sheens’ pool that the actor and his friends would be shot to fame. Grigroriadis writes that Lowe “wasn’t embarrassed to admit that he began landing the cool girls,” which the actor confessed over the years included Demi Moore, Nastassja Kinski, Princess Stéphanie—who, Lowe remembers “with a fair amount of residual pride,” had a poster of him—and Washington secretary Fawn Hall, whom Lowe tracked down after seeing her at the Oliver North trial. In his book, Lowe writes that Sheen in his early years was “one-of-a-kind … a Polo preppy clotheshorse in a world of O.P. shorts and surf T-shirts” and “a wonderful mix of nerd … and rebel.” “At my house we are still saving money by not buying desserts,” Lowe says, comparing his life to that of the Sheens, who lived nearby. “At Charlie’s house, it’s never-ending Häagen-Dazs, brand-new BMWs, a lagoon pool with underwater tunnels, and a lit, professional-grade basketball half-court.”

During the first round of auditions in Los Angeles, Lowe writes of meeting Tom Cruise, then a houseguest of the Sheens: “He’s open, friendly, funny, and has an almost robotic, bloodless focus and an intensity that I’ve never encountered before.” In New York for the second round of auditions, Lowe finds that Cruise is “already showing traits that will make him famous; he’s zeroed in like a laser.” “We check into the Plaza Hotel. I am taken aback at the luxury and spectacle of the lobby…. The front desk tells us we will be sharing rooms,” Lowe writes of the actors’ arrival in the Big Apple. “In a flash, Cruise is on the phone to his agent, Paula Wagner. ‘Paula, they are making us share,’ he says…. The rest of us are staggering around like happy goofs….. ‘O.K., then. Thank you very much,’ he says like a 50-year-old businessman getting off the phone with his stockbroker. ‘Paula says it’s fine.’ ”

Lowe remembers hanging out with Cruise and the other actors in a gymnasium on set, when Patrick Swayze—who, Lowe writes, “makes Tom Cruise look lobotomized”—“begins to teach us a standing backflip…. When it comes to flips, I’m a pussy. I don’t flip. I don’t even dive into a pool—straight cannonball for me…. No, thanks. Cruise, not surprisingly, is all over it. ‘How about this!’ he says, almost pulling it off without even being spotted. He wipes out, but tries it again immediately.”

Lowe describes the other young actors of The Outsiders, most of whom would later become major names in Hollywood. Patrick Swayze is “as cool as you want, wearing tight jeans and a tattered, sleeveless Harley-Davidson T-shirt revealing his massive, ripped arms. (This is his uniform, he never changes it, and if I looked like him, neither would I.),” Lowe writes. In Vanity Fair’s excerpt, Lowe goes on to describe his Outsiders co-star Matt Dillon as a young ladies’ man—picking up an ogling young fan in the hotel’s lobby; pins Diane Lane as everyone’s set crush (“At only 16, she already seems like a legend.… I watch as she breezes by with her chaperone. With all the teen testosterone on this movie, she’ll need one!”); and recalls how director Francis Ford Coppola had all the actors perform Tai Chi during rehearsal (“How does a 60s greaser know or care about Tai Chi? But if the world’s greatest living director thinks we should stand on our heads to prepare, we should probably do it”).

Lowe tells Grigoriadis that despite a rocky patch following his 80s stardom that landed him in rehab, he has no regrets. “The Brat Pack is timeless,” Lowe says. “We should all be so lucky in our lives to create things that we’re still talking about 25 years later.”

The May issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Thursday, March 31, and nationally on April 5. Click here to visit RobLowe.com.

RELATED: Rob Lowe reads his new book, Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography .

By Eve Batey

By Katie Herchenroeder

Vanity Fair

By Kase Wickman

By Dan Adler

By Bess Levin

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Rob Lowe Checks Out The Outsiders Broadway Show 41 Years After the Movie: 'OG Outsider'

The actor made his feature film debut in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 movie 'The Outsiders' as Sodapop Curtis

Roy Rochlin/Getty 

Rob Lowe is still a greaser at heart.

On May 14, the actor, 60, shared photos of himself posing outside the marquee for the Broadway adaptation of The Outsiders at the Jacobs Theatre in New York City on Instagram .

"From an OG Outsider, Congratulations! #broadway #theoutsiders," Lowe wrote in a caption to his photos, which show him posing opposite a sign showing the musical's cast and another sign that notes the production's 12 nominations at the upcoming Tony Awards .

Lowe made his feature film debut all the way back in 1983 in director Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. That film and the new Broadway production are based on author S.E. Hinton's 1967 novel of the same name.

Nancy Moran/Sygma via Getty

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Lowe costarred in The Outsiders with Tom Cruise ,  Diane Lane ,  Ralph Macchio ,  Matt Dillon , C. Thomas Howell, Emilio Estevez and Patrick Swayze .

It follows three brothers, Ponyboy Curtis (Howell, now 57), Darrel Curtis (Swayze, who died in in 2009 at 57) and Sodapop Curtis (Lowe) and their group of friends in Tulsa, Oklahoma during the 1960s, some time after the death of the Curtis brothers' parents.

Coppola, 85, shared footage from auditions for The Outsiders on Instagram in February that showed Lowe and other actors reading for parts in the film together on a soundstage. Lowe spoke to that unique audition process during an appearance on The Howard Stern Show in 2014.

"All those guys on that movie, they're like the guys who were in my fraternity at college. I can go my whole life ... any time I see any of the guys, I'm just ecstatic," he said of meeting his Outsiders cast mates.

The Outsiders is nominated for best musical, as well as 11 other awards, at the upcoming 77th Tony Awards, which will be held June 16.

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Matt Dillon had the edge on Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe, so why has his career languished in comparison?

Once heralded as the ‘james bond of his era’, dillon never rose to the prominence that was expected of him, says geoffrey macnab , but perhaps the actor’s greatest success was eschewing the limelight early fame afforded him – even if he did so to the detriment of his career, article bookmarked.

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

C inema’s rebellious outsiders tend to have a short shelf life. We can only guess what kind of career James Dean might have enjoyed had he still been working in his old age. Dean died in a car crash aged 24 in 1955. His fellow method star Montgomery Clift made it into his mid-forties before a fatal heart attack in 1966. Zbigniew Cybulski, the legendary leather-clad maverick of Polish post-war cinema, was in his thirties when he accidentally killed himself trying to jump on a speeding train on the set of one of his films.

One young rebel, though, who has continued acting well into middle age is the US star Matt Dillon . At the start of his career in the early Eighties, Dillon was regularly described as the James Dean of his era. He was mercurial, and very intense. Andy Warhol spoke of his “staggering good looks”.

Directors such as Francis Ford Coppola and Gus Van Sant turned to Dillon when they wanted to cast delinquents or gang leaders with a bit of charisma and swagger. He played bullies and jocks, but he did so with a soulful quality that meant audiences rarely took against him. Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe were his equally youthful co-stars in Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983) but Dillon’s was the face the camera loved. They paled in his presence.

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Rob Lowe shares perfectly '80s throwback of his double date with Tom Cruise

It's literally the best #TBT in a while.

To borrow Rob Lowe's own catchphrase (and his podcast title), he had the best #TBT photo of the week — Literally!

The actor shared totally '80s vibes on Thursday when he posted a pic showing him on a double date with his The Outsiders costar Tom Cruise .

"Double date 1980s style! I think this might've been the premiere of ' The World According to Garp ,'" Lowe captioned the pic.

In the shot, the actor is sporting the height of '80s fashion — a white blazer with a flipped up collar, a low slung white tie, and a pink button-down shirt — as he poses next to Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert . Cruise opted for a more muted navy wool blazer, blue button-down shirt and striped tie — with those classic '80s bangs.

Cruise is pictured alongside Michelle Meyrink, who played Marcia in The Outsiders , in the pic.

Rob's brother, Chad Lowe, called into question where the photo was taken, hilariously writing in the caption, "You sure this wasn't your prom?"

As it turns out, based on Getty Images' records, the double date happened at a screening for 1982's In the Custody of Strangers , a TV movie which starred Martin Sheen , Jane Alexander , and Cruise and Lowe's fellow The Outsiders castmember Emilio Estevez . In fact, our photo team found this shot of the three budding icons on the same red carpet.

The Outsiders came out a year later, in 1983. S.E. Hinton, who wrote the book, shared memories of what it was like onset, with the actors, in a 2017 interview with EW .

"The best thing, besides working with Francis [Ford Coppola], whom I adore, was the boys. Tommy [Howell] was 15, and Rob Lowe had his 18th birthday on the set. Matt [Dillon] had just turned 18. Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez were just 19. Ralph Macchio was the oldest at 20. They were typical goofy teenagers, but you get 'em in front of a camera and they'd turn into these serious artists. I loved watching that," she said.

Related content:

• EW talks Outsiders with Francis Ford Coppola
• S.E. Hinton on The Outsiders' success: 'It gave me writer's block for four years'
• New Parks and Rec podcast from Rob Lowe, Alan Yang to reveal show secrets

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‘The Outsiders’ Cast: Where Are They Now?

Stay golden. Ralph Macchio , Rob Lowe , Patrick Swayze and more transformed into ‘60s teens for Francis Ford Coppola’s big screen adaptation of The Outsiders .

The coming-of-age drama, based on S. E. Hinton ‘s classic novel of the same name, hit theaters in March 1983 and helped to kickstart the careers of several of its stars. In particular, Macchio received rave reviews for his turn as Johnny Cade in the battle of the Greasers and Socs.

“I read the book when I was 12 years old in seventh-grade English class. It was the first book that I ever finished cover to cover,” the Karate Kid actor told Parade in 2017. “S.E. Hinton — like J.K. Rowling of today — started a lot of young kids reading in school. I was immediately connected to it.”

Macchio was drawn to Johnny before even being cast in the project. “I always felt [Johnny] sounded like I looked,” he recalled. “Big puppy dog eyes, dark hair. He was the runt. I was never the biggest guy in class. But I didn’t come from his backstory by any stretch. … Johnny was a kid whose mother was an alcoholic. His father was abusive, and home was the last place he wanted to be. Those were the challenges, but I embraced them.”

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Lowe, for his part, looked back on how Coppola turned Hollywood’s Brat Pack into “wrong side of the tracks guys,” sharing behind-the-scenes secrets with Kelly Clarkson in 2020. “[He] found a bunch of different actual greasers who were now grown-up adults and made us go spend the night and live with them,” the “Literally” podcast host said on The Kelly Clarkson Show at the time. “They came to us at rehearsal and, like, ‘OK, so we’re gonna divide you up. Rob, Tom, you guys are gonna go stay with Bill and Sandy whoever.’ And we just went to their little house and had dinner.”

The costars “ended up in the basement on two cots” — and neither of them were thrilled with the setup. “I mean, who vetted them? Really?” Lowe joked. “Do you think Francis Ford Coppola spent a lot of time vetting these people? I can tell you, he didn’t. He was [sitting] with an espresso and watching some fancy Fellini movie and went, ‘Yeah, yeah that sounds great’ and went back to his espresso.”

Decades after its release, The Outsiders is still widely recognized as an all-time classic film. Scroll down to see what the cast is doing now:

Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock

'The Outsiders' Cast: Where Are They Now?

Stay golden. Ralph Macchio , Rob Lowe , Patrick Swayze and more transformed into ‘60s teens for Francis Ford Coppola’s big screen adaptation of The Outsiders . The coming-of-age drama, based on S. E. Hinton 's classic novel of the same name, hit theaters in March 1983 and helped to kickstart the careers of several of its stars. In particular, Macchio received rave reviews for his turn as Johnny Cade in the battle of the Greasers and Socs. “I read the book when I was 12 years old in seventh-grade English class. It was the first book that I ever finished cover to cover,” the Karate Kid actor told Parade in 2017. “S.E. Hinton — like J.K. Rowling of today — started a lot of young kids reading in school. I was immediately connected to it.” Macchio was drawn to Johnny before even being cast in the project. “I always felt [Johnny] sounded like I looked,” he recalled. “Big puppy dog eyes, dark hair. He was the runt. I was never the biggest guy in class. But I didn’t come from his backstory by any stretch. … Johnny was a kid whose mother was an alcoholic. His father was abusive, and home was the last place he wanted to be. Those were the challenges, but I embraced them.” Lowe, for his part, looked back on how Coppola turned Hollywood’s Brat Pack into “wrong side of the tracks guys,” sharing behind-the-scenes secrets with Kelly Clarkson in 2020. “[He] found a bunch of different actual greasers who were now grown-up adults and made us go spend the night and live with them,” the “Literally” podcast host said on The Kelly Clarkson Show at the time. “They came to us at rehearsal and, like, ‘OK, so we’re gonna divide you up. Rob, Tom, you guys are gonna go stay with Bill and Sandy whoever.’ And we just went to their little house and had dinner.” The costars “ended up in the basement on two cots” — and neither of them were thrilled with the setup. “I mean, who vetted them? Really?” Lowe joked. “Do you think Francis Ford Coppola spent a lot of time vetting these people? I can tell you, he didn’t. He was [sitting] with an espresso and watching some fancy Fellini movie and went, ‘Yeah, yeah that sounds great’ and went back to his espresso.” Decades after its release, The Outsiders is still widely recognized as an all-time classic film. Scroll down to see what the cast is doing now:

Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock; Courtesy of C. Thomas Howell/Instagram

C. Thomas Howell (Ponyboy Curtis)

Before The Outsiders , which earned him a Young Artist Award, Howell made his movie debut in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial . He later appeared in The Hitcher, Grandview U.S.A., Secret Admirer and Red Dawn and was one of the actors considered for the role of Marty McFly in Back to the Future , which ultimately went to Michael J. Fox. More recently, Howell has starred in The Amazing Spider-Man, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox and LBJ , with TV roles on Grimm, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, Animal Kingdom and The Blacklist. The California native previously dated Kyle Richards before marrying Rae Dawn Chong in 1989. The twosome called it quits one year later, and Howell tied the knot with Sylvie Anderson in 1992. They split in 2016.

Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock; Karl Schoendorfer/Shutterstock

Matt Dillon (Dallas Winston)

Following appearances in There's Something About Mary and Wild Things , Dillon made his directorial debut in 2000 with City of Ghosts . His performance in Crash won him an Independent Spirit Award and earned him nods at both the Oscars and Golden Globes. The New Yorker is a Grammy nominee, gaining recognition in 2001 for narrating Jack Kerouac's On the Road . Dillon has also appeared in Employee of the Month, You, Me and Dupree, Herbie: Fully Loaded and Capone .

Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock; Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock

Ralph Macchio (Johnny Cade)

Macchio is best known for playing Daniel LaRusso in the original Karate Kid franchise, a role he reprised on Netflix’s Cobra Kai, which began in 2018. He went on to star in ​​ My Cousin Vinny, Crossroads, Hitchcock and Psych: The Movie . On the small screen, the New York native had roles on Ugly Betty, The Deuce and Eight Is Enough . He landed in fourth place with pro Karina Smirnoff on season 12 of Dancing With the Stars in 2011. The Distant Thunder star shares daughter Julia and son Daniel with wife Phyllis Fierro .

Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock; Paul Hawthorne/Starpix/Shutterstock

Patrick Swayze (Darrel Curtis)

Apart from The Outsiders, Swayze’s most memorable performance was as Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing , which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Lead Actor in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical. His popularity grew after 1990’s Ghost , receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame seven years later. Following roles in Point Break, Donnie Darko, One Last Dance and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights , the actor died of pancreatic cancer in 2009. His final film credit was 2009’s Powder Blue . He is survived by wife Lisa Niemi , who wed Albert DePrisco in 2014.  

Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock; MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Rob Lowe (Sodapop Curtis)

A member of the Brat Pack, the Virginia native is known for his work in Oxford Blues, St. Elmo's Fire, About Last Night... and Square Dance . Lowe later turned to television, starring in Aaron Sorkin ’s The West Wing from 1999 to 2003. The Code Black alum has experienced a few ups and downs throughout his career, including a sex tape scandal and a sobriety journey. He made a major comeback with Parks and Recreation , playing Chris Traeger from 2010 to 2014 before joining the cast of 9-1-1: Lone Star in 2020. The Emmy nominee shares sons Matthew and John Owen with wife Sheryl Berkoff . In March 2023, John Owen and his dad teamed up for the Netflix series Unstable , in which they play a father-son duo who work together at a biotech research facility. 

Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock; Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock

Emilio Estevez (Two-Bit Matthews)

Martin Sheen’s son joined Lowe as part of the Brat Pack, also starring in The Breakfast Club and ​​St. Elmo's Fire. The filmmaker is also known for appearing in the Mighty Ducks franchise as hockey coach Gordon Bombay. After three of the sports movies, a series titled The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers debuted on Disney+ in 2021. Estevez raised eyebrows when he exited the show amid rumors he disagreed with the set’s COVID-19 vaccine policy. He later clarified to Deadline that his departure was due to “nothing more than a good old fashioned contract dispute” and “a myriad of creative differences.”

Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock; Carlos Tischler/Eyepix Group/Shutterstock

Tom Cruise (Steve Randle)

A three-time Oscar winner, Cruise is one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, with iconic roles in Top Gun, Risky Business, Jerry Maguire, The Mummy and more. Apart from his work on screen, the New Yorker’s personal life has been making headlines for years. He has been married thrice: to Mimi Rogers from 1987 to 1990, Nicole Kidman from 1990 to 2001 and Katie Holmes from 2006 to 2012. Cruise, who is a member of the Church of Scientology, welcomed a daughter with Holmes in 2006 and shares two adopted children —  Isabella (born 1992) and Connor (born 1995) — with Kidman.

Credit: Warner Bros.

Glenn Withrow (Tim Shepard)

Along with The Outsiders, the Kentucky native has worked in movies such as Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married . He jumped behind the camera in 2012, directing his first full-length feature film, The Mooring. Withrow has been married to Hallie Todd , with whom he shares daughter Ivy, since 1991.

Credit: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock; Matt Baron/Shutterstock

Diane Lane (Cherry Valance)

Lane has been a working actress since age 14, making her movie debut in A Little Romance . Other notable credits include The Perfect Storm, Unfaithful, Under the Tuscan Sun, Must Love Dogs, Man of Steel and more. She was previously married to producer Christopher Lambert — with whom she shares daughter Eleanor — from 1988 to 1994 and to Josh Brolin from 2004 to 2013.

Credit: Warner Bros.; Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

Leif Garrett (Bob Sheldon)

Garrett was a child star and a teen idol, signing a five-album record contract in 1976. Two decades later, he released a greatest hits compilation, The Leif Garrett Collection , which included covers of songs by the Beach Boys, Dion and more. The Fear Factor alum had a number of legal troubles over the years, from personal bankruptcy to driving under the influence. He was arrested several times throughout the ‘90s and early 2000s for drug possession and later dropped out of a court-ordered rehab program. Garrett entered treatment once again in 2010.

Credit: Warner Bros.; Courtesy of Darren Dalton/Twitter

Darren Dalton (Randy Anderson)

After The Outsiders , Dalton starred in Red Dawn alongside Swayze, Howell, Jennifer Grey , Harry Dean Stanton, Charlie Sheen and more. He went on to make guest appearances on TV shows including Quantum Leap and Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman . The Wyoming native was married to Kristin Dalton from 1993 to 2009.

Michelle Meyrink (Marcia)

The Canadian is also known for her work in 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds , but her last acting credit was just four years later in Permanent Record . She lives in Vancouver with her husband, John Dumbrille , and their three children.

Gailard Sartain (Jerry)

The Oklahoma native has been acting in small roles since the 1970s with credits including The Buddy Holly Story, Fried Green Tomatoes and The Replacements . His last known performance was in 2005’s Elizabethtown starring Orlando Bloom , Kirsten Dunst , Alec Baldwin and Susan Sarandon .

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Tom Cruise Turned Into A 'Competitive Lunatic' After He Accidentally Got Hit By Rob Lowe

It was an intense experience for Rob Lowe during his time alongside Tom Cruise in The Outsiders.

Rob Lowe has endured quite the career, filled with wacky experiences. Among them, included getting interrupted by Brendan Fraser during his closing sign-off on SNL . However, looking back, that was extremely tame compared to everything that went down with Tom Cruise during his role in the '80s film, The Outsiders. RELATED - Tom Cruise And Val Kilmer Blew Several Top Gun: Maverick Scenes Because They Couldn't Stop Laughing We'll take a look back at exactly what went down between the two. As expected, Cruise turned out to be quite intense , a theme that would follow that actor for the rest of his successful career.

Living With Tom Cruise Off-Camera Was Not An Easy Experience For Rob Lowe

During their work together in The Outsiders , Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise had quite the relationship, one that often times soured. Lowe recalls Cruise being very intense early on in his career. The actor saw that first-hand when the two had a room together in New York. According to Lowe, this did not sit well with Cruise , even when he was a less established name in the business.

"All of the L.A. people survived the L.A. auditions, and then the handpicked people had to go to New York to face the New York version; so it was me and Tom Cruise and Emilio and C. Thomas Howell," Lowe recalls with ET.

"We check in and Tom finds out that we're sharing a room, and just goes ballistic."

RELATED - Did Tom Cruise Really Make His Kids' Nanny Sign An NDA?

Lowe found it remarkable that even then, Cruise had high expectations, "The notion that an 18-year-old actor with a walk-on part in Endless Love , and like, a seventh lead in Taps , could have that kind of, like, wherewithal? I remember going, 'Wow, this guy is the real deal.'"

As if living with Cruise wasn't hard enough, on-set, things got worse between the two.

Tom Cruise Lost His Cool After Being Struck By Rob Lowe Accidentally

What should come as no surprise, Tom Cruise was very competitive on the set of The Outsider s. Rob Lowe recalls the cast trying to learn how to backflip and of course, the Mission Impossible star was the only one who could've pulled it off.

"It's hard to learn, and Tom was relentlessly competitive," Lowe says. "He ended up being the only one who could do a backflip. It is in the movie The Outsiders for no reason. He runs out of the house and does a backflip for no reason, just to do it."

RELATED - From Fans To Other Celebs, Tom Cruise Does Not Snub Selfie Requests

Things would sour even further between the two when on-camera, Lowe accidentally struck Cruise . This would lead to Tom completely losing.

“We all beat the living s--- out of one another,” Lowe said. “We really did. I got one clean shot on Tom, and Tom is such a competitive lunatic - which is what I love about him - but the next thing you know he's ready to kill me!”

The tension was already high due to Francis Ford Coppola creating a gang atmosphere on-set, as a way of method acting and keeping the tension alive between the cast. That moment truly solidified the chaos and tension taking place, something that clearly followed Tom throughout his career.

There Was A Lot Of Method Acting Involved During Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders

In order to add authenticity, the cast of boys required to live with real-life greasers, in order to get a bigger picture of the role. Speaking alongside Today , Lowe recalled the process of living in a basement alongside Cruise during the film.

“They came to us at rehearsal and like, ‘OK, so, we’re gonna divide you up. Rob, Tom, you guys are gonna go stay with Bill and Sandy whoever.’ And we just went to their little house and had dinner.”

“Tom and I ended up in the basement in two cots and we’re like, ‘We don’t know these people,’” he said.

Not only that, but the director also decided to split up the cast, according to the gangs their characters belonged to. It was quite the atmosphere and experience for everyone involved.

Past Factory

Stay Golden With These Little-Known Facts About 'The Outsiders'

Posted: June 14, 2024 | Last updated: June 15, 2024

An adaptation of S.E. Hinton's 1967 novel of the same name, The Outsiders is a 1983 coming-of-age film about a rivalry between "The Socs" and "The Greasers," two gangs separated by social class, and the consequences that follow when one member murders the other. Directed by the renowned Francis Ford Coppola, the film is particularly notable for its up-and-coming ensemble cast, including C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, and Patrick Swayze.

The film was well-received upon its initial release and is today considered a classic. Continue reading to find out everything you need to know about the movie!

High School Students Convinced Francis Ford Coppola To Make It

During the 1970s, The Outsiders was a common-place book for high school students to read as part of the curriculum. When a librarian named Jo Ellen Misakian in Fresno, California, noticed that even non-readers were even picking up the book to read, she wrote a petition for her 7th and 8th graders to sign for Coppola to turn it into a movie.

When Misakian accidentally sent the petition and a copy of the book to a New York address that Coppola rarely used, it grabbed his attention and he agreed to adapt the book.

There Was A Separation Of The Actors

One of the biggest plot points in The Outsiders is the class separation between the affluent and popular "Socs" and the rougher around the edges "Greasers." When the teenagers were selected to be in the film, little did any of them know that they would actually be separated into groups.

Coppola wanted to establish a real rift between the actors which led him to divide them into their fictional social statuses, ensuring that those playing the "Socs" had better rooms, more spending money, free room service, and leather-bound scripts.

Read More: Yabba Dabba Doo! Rock-Solid Facts About The Flintstones

Coppola Added More Than 20 Minutes To The DVD Release

Upon its initial release, The Outsiders was relatively well-received by both film critics and book lovers alike. However, it did encounter some criticism from omitting and rearranging scenes from the novel.

So, in 2005, when Coppola released the film on DVD, it was titled as The Outsiders: The Complete Novel. This version of the film had around 22 minutes of unseen footage and included a more contemporary soundtrack than when the film was first released.

People Are Trying To Save The Fictional Curtis House

Back in 2009, hip-hop artist and Outsiders fan Danny Boy O'Connor from House of Pain stopped by the house in Tulsa Oklahoma that served as the fictional residence of the Curtis family.

He was saddened to see that the house was being neglected and felt that he should do something about it. He then rallied a group of friends to help buy the house with the high hopes of turning it into an Outsiders museum.

The Book Was Written By A Teenager

S.E. Hinton stands for Susan Eloise Hinton, who was a 15-year-old high school student when she wrote The Outsiders, which was published in 1967. She was interested in writing a different kind of story for her demographic, stating that, "Mary Jane wants to go to the prom with the football hero...didn't ring true to my life."

So, she wrote a book about real teenage struggles, handing the manuscript to a friend's mother he had contacts at an agency in New York. Editors then suggested that she go by "S.E." so male readers didn't know it was a female author, and her novel sold more than 14 million copies.

There Was A Television Show (Kind Of)

Although few could imagine The Outsiders without its iconic ensemble cast, Fox decided to take a risk and make a television show with all new actors anyway. The show was set to air in 1990 and had a young cast of mostly unrecognizable faces. However, some actors, including Billy Bob Thorton, David Arquette, and Jay R. Ferguson, had appearances.

While the premiere of the show had a short introduction by Bart Simpson and was well-received, the program was canceled after just 13 episodes.

The Boys Went Through A Rigorous Audition Process

Most typical auditions for both films and television usually involve one person per session, reading the part of one of the characters. However, the auditions for The Outsiders was far from ordinary.

Instead of one person, the process involved up to 30 young actors at a time who would be told to act out specific excerpts from the script. Those that casting director Frank Roos liked the best would then be taken out from the larger group. At a minimum, each group of actors would audition for three parts each.

The End Sunset Isn't Real

At the end of the film, Coppola knew that he wanted to use a beautiful sunset for Ponyboy and Johnny to act against. Yet, because the sunsets in Oklahoma during filming weren't very long, Coppola had to get creative.

He decided on using a rear screen projection to create the ideal sunset for Ponyboy's ending scene as he writes down the words stated at the beginning of the film. Furthermore, Warner Bros. had a lot of the film's scenes cut, but Coppola fought to keep this particular moment in.

Tom Cruise And Rob Lowe Had A Real Greaser Experience

At one point during filming, actors Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise actually spent the night at a real "Greaser" couple's house that was living in Tulsa.

At first, Lowe was hesitant about the prospect about staying the night with people that Coppola had just met on the street, but was pleasantly surprised when he learned that the strangers were actually very hospitable. Both actors admitted that it was a life-changing experience and for Lowe, helped solidify the idea that he wanted to be a full-time actor.

Ralph Macchio Had To Live On Five Dollars A Day

Once Macchio scored the role of the less fortunate Johnny, Coppola made a point to have Macchio feel what it was like to live in Johnny's shoes. To do so, Macchio was forced to live on five dollars a day, a similar situation that his character experienced in the film.

So, when Johnny scarfs down the burger and fries in the film, it's most likely because he was actually starving. Furthermore, for two nights, Macchio was recommended to "sleep outside for a few nights" by Coppola, which he did, sleeping on park benches using only newspaper for blankets

The Church Fire Was Real

Coppola is known for being as realistic as possible in his films, so it's no surprise that the fire when Johnny and Ponyboy save the kids from the church fire is real. Coppola repeatedly asked the technician to keep adding more fire to the church, which is when things started to get out of control.

The fire spread to the steeple and soon became too hard to contain. Luckily, the local fire department was on the scene to help, and a rainstorm helped to put out the flames.

Hinton Turned Down Several Other Offers To Adapt Her Novel

Before being approached by Coppola, Hinton and previously turned down several offers by other studios for fear that they wouldn't do her novel justice. However, after Coppola and Hinton began talking, the two made a deal to work on the film together.

The selling point was that Hinton would serve as a consultant to ensure the movie was up to her standards. On top of that, Hinton was also impressed with the studio's adaptation of The Black Stallion, which made her feel more comfortable.

The Movie Poster Was A Candid Shot

For the movie's poster, the initial idea was for the Greasers to be in character for the picture, but it didn't pan out that way. The reaction on the actors' faces occurred after Lief Garrett, who played Bob, went to the catering table and was denied by the stagehand who didn't believe that he was part of the film.

After Garrett was denied, Macchio joked, saying, "Yeah, it's for the talent." This prompted the boys to burst into laughter, giving us the movie poster we see today.

The Studio Didn't Like The Rough Cut

When Coppola and Hinton first showed the rough cut to Warner Bros., the studio definitely had their doubts. They didn't think that teenagers could sit through a two-hour film and that it would lose their attention.

So, Coppola was instructed to cut some of the material into a more manageable length to appease a younger audience. However, this would result in the film missing its expected release date in the fall of 1982. After some edits were made, the film was given the go-ahead for a March 23rd release date.

Diane Lane Was The Butt Of A Lot Of Pranks On Set

Dianne Lane, who played Ponyboy's love interest, Cherry Valance, was constantly the victim of pranks by the boys during the months of shooting that they were all together.

In Variety's oral history of The Outsiders, she mentioned that "It was frightening to see and realize many of the violations of psyche and boundaries such as honey all over my toilet seat, something terrorizing written with my lipstick in the mirror, Vaseline on every door handle, and just when you think it's safe and you can finally sleep that night, your bed is short-sheeted!" it's a wonder she stayed on with the project!

The Movie Is Dedicated To The School That Helped Get It Made

Af the end of the film, a dedication is on the screen that reads, " The Outsiders is dedicated to the people who first suggested that it be made." The people that the dedication is referencing is librarian Jo Ellen Misakian and the students of the Lone Star School in Fresno, California, who signed the petition for Coppola to make the film.

Of course, Misakian and the students never assumed for their petition to work, so you can imagine how they felt when they were personally mentioned in the film.

S.E. Hinton Revealed Sodapop's Tragic Future

In The Outsiders: The Complete Novel documentary, Rob Lowe, who plays Sodapop, asks the author, S.E. Hinton, what happened to Sodapop Curtis after the events of The Outsiders.

Hinton explains that Sodapop is drafted into the army during the Vietnam War, where he is killed in action. Lowe remembers taking this small detail to heart, which helped him develop the character to the best of his abilities, knowing that his character would, unfortunately, live a short life.

Hinton Has A Cameo In The Film

During the filming of The Outsiders, Coppola's company, Zoetrope was so low on funds that they could only pay Hinton $500 of her $5,000 rights fee. Yet, Hinton and Coppola made a deal that Hinton could have a cameo.

She appears as the Nurse when Dallas, played by Matt Dillon, is being taken care of in the hospital. While on set, Hinton was often referred to as "Mom" by the male actors, as she provided them a lot of insight into their characters and was there for emotional support.

There Were Several Accidents On Set

A few different actors were hurt by accident when making the movie, with most of them taking place during the rumble scene in the rain. One of the most notable of these accidents occurred during the first punch thrown in the fight.

C. Thomas Howell commented, "There was this stunt man at the very start who slipped and punched me right in the face. That wasn't supposed to happen. So the scene I had prepared for ended up being Matt Dillon dragging me off." Some of the other actors also took small injuries during the fight as there had already been pent up anger between the "Socs" and the "Greasers" behind the scenes.

Tom Cruise Needed A Little Help Before Performing His Backflip

When the Curtis boys are hyping themselves up for the rumble while leaving the house, Tom Cruise does a backflip off of a car in the front yard. Patrick Swayze was coaching Cruise how to do the stunt right before it was filmed, and Cruise was incredibly uneasy.

Cruise then approached Hinton, saying he didn't know he could do it because he felt sick from lunch. Hinton then had Cruise drink raw eggs until he threw up, which apparently made him feel better. He then pulled off the flip with no further problems.

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Angelina Jolie Opens Up About Her Bond With Daughter Vivienne While Producing 'The Outsiders'

Angelina Jolie is credited as a producer on the Broadway production of 'The Outsiders' while Vivienne is a producer's assistant.

Angelina Jolie says that producing the Broadway adaptation of The Outsiders helped her to understand her daughter, Vivienne , more deeply. 

Sitting down with Deadline   ahead of the 77th Annual Tony Awards on Sunday, the Girl, Interrupted actress, 49, opened up about her youngest child's love of theater and how it led to their involvement as producer and producer's assistant with the show. The Outsiders is nominated for 12 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Direction of a Musical, a nod that went to Danya Taymor, who sat down with Angelina for the interview. 

Angelina previously shared with ET that it was a shared love of the production at the La Jolla Playhouse that began the process of them helping to bring the show to New York. In the new interview, though, she elaborated on but shared with Deadline just how much her child wanted to participate in sharing The Outsiders with the world. 

"My daughter Viv loves theater. She appreciates all theater but she certainly knows what she feels close to and what she responds to. She went to see  The Outsiders  at La Jolla about five times and was telling me about it, and I had read the book, and I’d seen the film years ago," Angelina shared with the outlet, adding that when Vivienne, 15, came to her and asked her to see it, she saw it as an opportunity to get to know her own child better. 

"...Danya speaks of how important it is to teenagers, how it was written by somebody who’s the age of my daughter, right? So, really, as a mother, as a person, I was watching it, but I was really watching the effect it was having on my young daughter and what she was telling me about herself, and I was learning what about it was important to her and why it connected so deeply to her," the actress continued. 

The Outsiders is a staged musical adaptation of the film and the 1967 novel by S. E. Hinton. The 1983 film of the same name helped to launch the careers of actors like Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez and more. 

"Ponyboy Curtis, his best friend Johnny Cade and their Greaser family of outsiders battle with their affluent rivals, the Socs. This thrilling new Broadway musical navigates the complexities of self-discovery as the Greasers dream about who they want to become in a world that may never accept them," reads the play's description on the show's official  site .

For Angelina, who says that her daughter -- whom she shares with ex-husband Brad Pitt -- is in the thick of the complicated teenage years, truly understanding the source material became one way to put herself in her daughter's shoes. Angelina and Brad -- who were together for 12 years -- share six children in total: Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, Zahara, 19, Shiloh, 17, Vivienne, and her twin brother, Knox, 15. 

"So, it was a very different experience of understanding, of how this is having a significant effect on her as a young person right now, and she's communicating something to me, and that is the power of this material, which was in really good shape even by then. And then I had the privilege of watching everyone work over this last year to make it into what it is, and Vivienne has been there the whole way," she said.

The "whole way" includes everything from production meetings to the opening night at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in the Big Apple. In March, Angelina and Vivienne had a rare public outing as they attended the celebration  and posed for pics with the cast and crew. 

Furthermore, the duo is credited for their work in the show's official playbill, which made headlines in May as Vivienne opted to drop her dad's last name, echoing moves made by sisters Shiloh and Zahara , who have both chosen to go without "Pitt" in their names. 

The project is not the first (or last) time that the pair has shown off their love of the arts, though. In 2022, the mother-daughter duo attended a performance of Dear Evan Hansen in Philadelphia and met with the cast backstage.

Angelina and Vivienne also recently posed for photos alongside Kristen Bell at the opening of Reefer Madness: The Musical in Los Angeles. The Veronica Mars actress, 43, starred in the film that the stage production is adapted from.

If we had to put money on it, The Outsiders also won't be the last show they work on together or the last time they see their work acknowledged by the theater community. In 2023, Angelina told ET via a statement that Vivienne's passion for the arts is something she anticipates sticking around for a while. 

"Viv reminds me of my mother [Marcheline Bertrand] in that she isn’t focused on being the center of attention but in being a support to other creatives," Angelina said. "She’s very thoughtful and serious about theatre and working hard to best understand how to contribute."

For more on the mother-daughter duo taking over the theater world, check out the links below. 

Hosted once again by  Ariana DeBose , the 77th Tony Awards will air live on Sunday, June 16, at 5 p.m. PT/8p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+.

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The Brat Pack, Explained: A Guide to the Iconic 1980s Acting Posse

By Pat Saperstein

Pat Saperstein

Deputy Editor

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“Hollywood’s Brat Pack: Rob, Emilio, Sean, Tom, Judd and the rest — the young movie stars you can’t quite keep straight,” read the headline of an article in the June 10, 1985 New York Magazine, a few months after “The Breakfast Club” was released.

Nearly 40 years later, most people don’t have much trouble telling Sean Penn from Tom Cruise, but at the time, it seemed like a whole new flock of young stars had just taken over the movie business from the old guard. The gang of attractive actors, who frequently socialized together, were dubbed The Brat Pack after appearing in movies like “Taps,” “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish” that signaled a fresh new influx of talent.

The word “Brat” was just a play on the 1960s Rat Pack — and an allusion to their general youthful braggadocio — but the magazine article had an outsized effect. The word led the public to view the actors as entitled jerks (the article admitted that several of the members were nepo babies), and it took them decades in some cases to shake off the reputation.

“These boys — these young studs, all under 25 years old, decked out in ‘Risky Business’ sunglasses and trendish sport jackets and designer T-shirts — they were the Main Event,” the article’s author David Blum breathlessly recounted. No wonder people got a bad impression.

Some actors who were barely mentioned in the article, like Andrew McCarthy, became lumped in with the group and bristled whenever the name was brought up. But now, as McCarthy debuts his documentary “Brats” on Hulu, some of them are finally embracing it as an affectionate vestige of the ’80s, an era that evokes great nostalgia among both those who made it through alive and those who wish they had been there. McCarthy explores this phenomenon in his documentary, and he now finds it a “wonderfully iconic” phrase.

Other than brief mentions of Demi Moore and Melissa Gilbert as girlfriends of the actors, the article didn’t mention any women. But the women of the Brat Pack movies were every bit as charismatic, from Moore to Molly Ringwald to Ally Sheedy.

There were many other Brat Pack-adjacent actors who starred in classic films of the ’80s, from Anthony Michael Hall and Estevez’s younger brother Charlie Sheen to Matthew Broderick, Mare Winningham, James Spader, Kevin Bacon, Robert Downey Jr., Lea Thompson, Diane Lane and Phoebe Cates.

For the purposes of this guide, we’ll concentrate on the core members, especially those who were named in the article that started it all.

Dubbed “the most beautiful face” in the original Brat Pack article, Rob Lowe moved from Ohio to Malibu as a teen, where he met Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez and Sean Penn. His first major role came in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders,” which he shot in Tulsa, Okla. alongside Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Matt Dillion, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane and Patrick Swayze. After appearing in “Class,” “Oxford Blues” and “Hotel New Hampshire,” Lowe made the quintessential Brat Pack films “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “About Last Night.”

Where is he now? Though some of his later film roles weren’t as arresting as those of his Brat Pack era, he went on to become a TV mainstay with long runs in series including “Brothers & Sisters,” “Parks and Recreation” and “9-1-1: Lone Star.”

Emilio Estevez

Named the “unofficial president” of the Brat Pack in the original article, Emilio Estevez took his father Martin Sheen’s real name so as to not be identified with the “Apocalypse Now” actor. He made his film debut in “Tex” and then starred in “The Outsiders.” But his most memorable roles came as the jock Andrew in “The Breakfast Club” and as punk rocker Otto in “Repo Man,” along with the emblematic “St. Elmo’s Fire.”

Where is he now: After starring in “Young Guns” and “The Mighty Ducks,” Estevez tried his hand at directing with movies like “Men at Work,” “Wisdom” and “Bobby.” He appears in the new documentary “Brats.”

Tom Cruise’s first major role was also in “Taps,” which he followed up with several movies that made a bang, including “The Outsiders,” “All the Right Moves” and the smash hit “Risky Business.” The Brat Pack article called him “the hottest of all” — and that was even before he starred in 1986’s “Top Gun.”

Where is he now? Still starring in “Top Gun,” but this time as the elder flight instructor in “Top Gun: Maverick,” as well as his long-running role heading up the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. With four Oscar nominations, including acting noms for “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Jerry Maguire” and “Magnolia,” Cruise has achieved the most box office staying power, coupled with awards recognition, of any of the Brat Pack.

Sean Penn grew up in Malibu in a movie business family and, like several other members of the Brat Pack, made his film debut in “Taps.” Being called “the most gifted of them all” in the New York magazine article was a lot to live up to, but in fact he’s the only member with two Oscars to his name.

After appearing in the iconic role of Jeff Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Penn immediately plunged into more serious roles in films such as “The Falcon and the Snowman” and “Casualties of War” — notwithstanding “Shanghai Surprise,” in which he starred with his new bride Madonna.

Where is he now? Penn won acting Oscars for “Milk” and “Mystic River” and starred in dozens more films including “Dead Man Walking,” “The Thin Red Line” and “Licorice Pizza.” He has directed several films and devotes much of his time to political activism.

Demi Moore may not have been an “official” member of the Brat Pack, but she certainly has honorary status for her coolly alluring early roles in “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “About Last Night.” Moore went on to star in more grown-up roles in films like “Ghost,” “Indecent Proposal,” “A Few Good Men” and “G.I. Jane.”

Where is she now? Moore appeared on the series “Empire” and recently starred as Ann Woodward in “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans.” An Emmy winner, she published a successful memoir “Inside Out” in 2019. She was also interviewed in the “Brats” documentary.

Andrew McCarthy

With his preppy East Coast sensibility and shyly seductive smile, Andrew McCarthy wasn’t mentioned as part of the original Brat Pack in the New York Magazine article — in fact, one of his co-stars in “St. Elmo’s Fire” insulted him in the story. So it’s no wonder he told Variety that, for a long time, he wasn’t happy about the label.

“I found it limiting and judgmental. If you’re going to be labelled, people stop trying to understand you,” he said. But as a foil to the hard-partying Hollywood actors, he turned out to be the perfect “sensitive guy” in movies like “Pretty in Pink,” “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Less than Zero.”

Where is he now: McCarthy acted off and on while also becoming a TV director and frequent travel writer. His documentary “Brats,” about the Brat Pack era, premieres June 13 on Hulu.

Matt Dillon

“The one least likely to replace Marlon Brando” was a strange way for the Brat Pack article to describe Matt Dillon, but Dillon was more than capable of making his own impact as an actor. He made an impression in teen films “Little Darlings” and “My Bodyguard,” and starred in in three S.E. Hinton adaptations — “Rumble Fish,” “The Outsiders” and “Tex.” His brooding, rugged looks were put to good use in Gus van Sant’s “Drugstore Cowboy” and “To Die For,” and he also appeared in films like “Singles” and “There’s Something About Mary.”

Where is he now? Dillon earned a supporting actor nom for his role in Paul Haggis’ “Crash” and he has been cast by directors as varied as Lars von Trier in “The House That Jack Built” and Wes Anderson in “Asteroid City.” He also starred in one season of the series “Wayward Pines.”

Nicolas Cage

Cage’s role in his uncle Francis Ford Coppola’s “Rumble Fish” cemented his status as part of the Brat Pack. But nearly all his roles during that period became the stuff of legend: from Hollywood punk Randy in “Valley Girl” to “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “Moonstruck” and “Raising Arizona.” He went on to win an Oscar for “Leaving Las Vegas” and nabbed a nomination for “Adaptation.” Let’s just forget about the fact that the New York Magazine article described the Italian American actor as “The Ethnic Chair” of the Brat Pack.

Where is he now? Still working like crazy — six films in 2023 alone — in everything from “Pig” to “Dream Scenario” and the upcoming “Longlegs,” after a long run of action movies and starring in the “National Treasure” franchise.

Judd Nelson

Judd Nelson found his signature role as delinquent John Bender in “The Breakfast Club,” where his sensitively troubled bad boy persona struck just the right note. New York Magazine’s article was not particularly kind when it dubbed him “the overrated one,” but it’s true that his role in “St. Elmo’s Fire” didn’t make as big an impression.

Where is he now? Though Nelson struggled to find the same caliber of roles as some of his Brat Bros, he had a long run on Brooke Shields’ sitcom “Suddenly Susan” in the 1990s. He’s continued to work steadily, especially in voice work for “Transformers” projects. He declined to be interviewed for the documentary “Brats.”

Ally Sheedy

Ally Sheedy might not be as well remembered as some of the other members of the Brat Pack, but her indelible role as Alison, the “basket case” of “The Breakfast Club” was relatable for disaffected teens of several generations. Before that, she appeared in Brat Pack-adjacent films “Bad Boys” with Sean Penn, “War Games” with Matthew Broderick and “Oxford Blues” with Rob Lowe. She went on to have memorable roles in “Short Circuit,” “Maid to Order” and the 2016 indie “Little Sister.”

Where is she now? Sheedy has appeared in occasional films such as “High Art,” as well as in TV series such as “Kyle XY” and “Psych.” She is a professor in the theater department of the City University of New York.

Timothy Hutton

Hutton was “the only one with an Oscar,” the Brat Pack magazine article noted. After becoming the youngest supporting actor Oscar winner ever at age 20 for “Ordinary People,” Timothy Hutton joined the other Brat Packers in the promising “Taps” ensemble. His subsequent films, such as “Daniel,” “Iceman” and “The Falcon and the Snowman” with Sean Penn, were not prototypical Brat Pack titles, but his role in “Taps” was enough to make him one of the pack.

Where is he now: Hutton has had numerous film roles as well as recurring roles on series including “Leverage,” “American Crime” and “Almost Family.” In 2020, he was accused of allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl in 1983; authorities closed the investigation with no charges filed.

Molly Ringwald

Molly Ringwald was a bit younger than the other Brat Packers and never felt entirely comfortable being associated with the group. But as the spunky star of “Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink,” and “The Breakfast Club,” in which she played the “princess” Claire, she left a big impression on moviegoers of the 1980s and beyond. She went on to star in “The Pick-Up Artist” and “Fresh Horses.”

Where is she now? Ringwald had a meaty part as Joanne Carson on “Feud” and has had recurring roles in series including “Riverdale,” “Monster,” “Great Expectations” and “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” She declined to be interviewed for the “Brats” documentary. “I don’t want to appear ungrateful to John Hughes, but I do oppose a lot of what is in those movies,” she told NPR about her early films.

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Don’t You Forget About These: 5 Defining Brat Pack Movies

With the documentary “Brats” coming to the Tribeca Festival and Hulu, here’s a look back at ’80s movies featuring young stars who defined a generation.

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By Mekado Murphy

The 1980s: when the hair was crimped, the pants were parachute and the movie stars were as fresh-faced as could be. The decade produced a surprising volume of hit coming-of-age movies, featuring actors often in their late teens and early twenties. Some of these charismatic stars would come to be known as the Brat Pack, a term coined by the writer David Blum in a 1985 New York magazine article about the youth movie phenomenon.

At the time, the stars who were considered a part of the Brat Pack were offended by the term, one that seemed dismissive of their work and painted them as careless and unprofessional. The actor Andrew McCarthy had been grappling for decades with how the term changed the trajectory of his career, and he decided to make a documentary about it. In “Brats,” which is premiering at the Tribeca Festival on Friday and streaming on Hulu beginning June 13, McCarthy reconnects with some of his ’80s co-stars (including Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy and Demi Moore) to discuss how being in the Brat Pack affected them, for better or worse.

Despite the negative connotations of the term, the Brat Pack movies truly did come to define a generation, and the documentary shines a light on what these movies meant, and still do mean, to young people (even as the culture has changed). While a dozen or so movies qualify as Brat Pack selections, below is a look at five of the most defining films for the moniker, and why they had such an impact.

‘The Breakfast Club’ (1985)

Detention has never been as fascinating as it is in this John Hughes classic, about five archetypal students forced to endure a Saturday together in the school library: the brain (Anthony Michael Hall), the athlete (Estevez), the basket case (Sheedy), the princess (Molly Ringwald) and the criminal (Judd Nelson). They trade jabs, laugh, cry and share personal stories that allow them to see one another as individuals rather than as the convenient labels placed on them.

It was, and continues to be, a kind of guidebook on how to endure as a teenager, especially when under pressure to act or present oneself a certain way. The performances are top-notch, especially from Ringwald, who turns her popular-girl character into one with whom we can all relate.

Stream “The Breakfast Club” on Max.

‘The Outsiders’ (1983)

Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of the 1967 S.E. Hinton novel is in many ways the godfather of the Brat Pack movies. Its ensemble cast includes actors who would become some of the biggest stars of the decade: Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Estevez and a little-known performer named Tom Cruise. The Tulsa-set film features C. Thomas Howell and Ralph Macchio as two “greasers” with tough backgrounds who find themselves in hot water after a tussle with wealthy “socs,” short for “socials.”

It’s a joy to watch all of these up-and-coming stars at the beginnings of their careers, navigating a story that Coppola punctuates with Hollywood flourishes that imbue some John Ford western energy into the mix. Even though many of these characters have never left Oklahoma, they seem to be carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. The film gives teen alienation a bold canvas on which to be explored.

Stream “The Outsiders” on Tubi.

‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ (1985)

This film, directed by Joel Schumacher, is another Brat Packer that sparks, if you will, because of its eager ensemble cast. What makes it so interesting is that its young characters are trying hard for a level of responsibility. But they keep tripping over their flaws of immaturity in the process.

Lowe, McCarthy, Nelson, Estevez and Sheedy are all in the mix (and Lowe’s character plays a mean saxophone), but one of the standouts is Moore. While her breakout was in the year prior with sex comedies like “Blame It on Rio” and “No Small Affair,” she really glows here as the character Jules, whose outgoing personality and garishness mask some deep psychological wounds. This is definitely not another sex comedy.

Stream “St. Elmo’s Fire” on Amazon Prime Video and Hulu .

‘Pretty in Pink’ (1986)

Are you Team Blane or Team Duckie? This is a perennial question for those infatuated with this teen romance written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch. Ringwald stars as Andie Walsh, a girl from a low-income upbringing who lives with her single father. She has a lifelong friendship with the quirky outsider Duckie (Jon Cryer) and a very new crush on Blane (McCarthy), a rich kid whom Andie is ashamed to tell where she lives. James Spader also plays a memorable role as Steff, a rich friend of Blane’s who treats Andie with disrespect.

And while Cryer is more Brat Pack-adjacent than an actual member, his character pretty much steals this movie with his outfits and his antics, including a lip sync and dance he performs in a record shop to Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness.” How can you not be Team Duckie after seeing that?

Stream “Pretty in Pink” on Paramount+.

‘Class’ (1983)

This comedic drama was significant for being McCarthy’s debut feature, where he also delivers one of his most heartfelt performances. His character, Jonathan, is met with obstacles from the moment he arrives at his new prep school. He is immediately talked into putting on a bra and panties by his roommate, Skip (Lowe), as part of what he thinks is a school tradition, and then is sent outside and locked out of the dorm while wearing them.

Things change for the unlucky-in-love boy when Skip gives him money to head to Chicago to try to meet and bed a girl in the big city. At a bar, Jonathan encounters an older woman (Jacqueline Bisset) and they hook up. Only later does he find out that the woman is Skip’s mother. The revelation is played more awkwardly and dramatically than comically. While Bisset delivers a tempered, yet passionate performance, the movie’s real chemistry is between McCarthy and Lowe, who seem to have a natural ease with each other onscreen.

Stream “Class” on the Roku Channel.

Mekado Murphy is the assistant film editor. He joined The Times in 2006. More about Mekado Murphy

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See the Brat Pack Then and Now, 39 Years After the Label Changed Their Lives Forever

Andrew mccarthy, rob lowe, demi moore & more stars of st. elmo's fire and the breakfast club are working out their feelings about the brat pack designation in a new documentary..

Rob Lowe , Judd Nelson  and Emilio Estevez   didn't consider being dubbed "Hollywood's Brat Pack" to be their finest moment.

And getting lumped into the club must have really shocked  Molly Ringwald , Demi Moore  and Ally Sheedy : None of them were even mentioned in the culture-jolting June 1985  New York magazine cover story that heralded those three actors as red-hot-yet-interchangeable rising stars who were,  ahem , making the most of their fame.

They've all dealt with that formative, judgment-laced success in their own ways over the past 39 years. However, it's Andrew McCarthy —who was referred to  once in the article but was branded a Brat all the same—who's been exploring the long-term effects of the designation on his life, first in his 2021 memoir  Brat: An '80s Story , and again in the new documentary  Brats .

In the film, he opens the floor to the casts of The Breakfast Club   and St. Elmo's Fire , the two 1985 films that ultimately qualified all of the above for membership, even though the  New York  story calls 1981's  Taps— which starred none of these actors—the first Brat Pack movie.

"The Brat Pack is who people say it is, because the Brat Pack never 'existed' in any real way," McCarthy told The Guardian   ahead of the doc's June 13 premiere on Hulu. "It's more an idea of young actors who'd taken over Hollywood—we were the ones that were doing that at that moment, so we're in the Brat Pack."

Referring to the reporter-along-for-a-night-of-partying article that started it all, the filmmaker cracked, "I don't think a journalist has been allowed to go out for drinks with a subject since."

But after spending decades pushing back against the nomenclature, McCarthy opted to lean in and get as much of the band back together as possible to discuss what it all meant to them, personally and culturally.

Lowe, Moore, Sheedy and Estevez sat down for Brats , as did Pack-adjacent actors  Jon Cryer ,  Timothy Hutton  (the lead in Taps ) and Lea Thompson .

Ringwald is heard from in archival footage, but McCarthy admitted it "would've been great" to get her fresh perspective, telling Us Weekly , "She said she'd think about it and that was really the end of it."

Also skipping the trip down memory lane were Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall , who was only 16 when  The Breakfast Club  came out and therefore wasn't along for the  New York -chronicled wild ride.

But he remains an O.G. Brat all the same because—to paraphrase brainy, flare-gun-packing Brian—the zeitgeist saw him as it wanted to see him.

Meanwhile, you don't have to give up your Saturday to see what all the members of the Brat Pack are doing now:

The star of Sixteen Candles , The Breakfast Club  and Pretty in Pink was the queen bee of the Brat Pack. And, Ringwald told Entertainment Weekly  in 1996, she remembered those days "very fondly."

However, in a 2018  New Yorker  essay , she noted that certain scenes in  The Breakfast Club  wouldn't fly in the post-#MeToo era. "I worried that [my daughter] would find aspects of it troubling," she wrote, "but I hadn't anticipated that it would ultimately be most troubling to me."

Her star-making decade also included roles in The Pickup Artist with Robert Downey Jr. and the teen pregnancy drama  For Keeps ? , while her 1990s highlights included  Betsy's Wedding , the 1994 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King 's The Stand and  Teaching Mrs. Tingle .

In 2008, Ringwald switched into parental mode on The Secret Life of the American Teenager , playing the mother of  Shailene Woodley 's pregnant teen Amy. She then moved to a recurring role on Riverdale as Archie Andrews' mom, and played Noah and Lee's mom in the hit teen rom-com franchise The Kissing Booth .

In real life she's mom to a daughter and fraternal-twin boys with her second husband, Panio Gianopoulos .

Estevez had already made a name for himself as one of the hot up-and-comers in The Outsiders and followed that up with the cult classic Repo Man before he taped anyone's buns together and ended up in detention in The Breakfast Club .  He then starred in St. Elmo's Fire as Kirby, who pines away for a med student played by Andie MacDowell .

New York  magazine deemed him the unofficial president (and treasurer, because he was the one most likely to pick up the tab) of the Brat Pack in the June 10, 1985, cover story that followed Estevez, Judd Nelson and Rob Lowe   during a night on the town.

"I'll bet if you asked everyone in the cast who their best friend is, they'd all say Emilio," St. Elmo's Fire director Joel Schumacher said. "He's that kind of guy." (Estevez was Tom Cruise 's best man when his Outsiders costar married Mimi Rogers in 1987.)

In 1985, Estevez had written the script for the movie that would become the 1990 comedy thriller Men at Work , which he also directed and starred in with brother Charlie Sheen . 

He also notably starred in Young Guns  and its sequel plus the three-film The Mighty Ducks franchise—and reprised the role of Gordon Bombay in Disney+'s The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. Behind the camera he directed father Martin Sheen in The War at Home  and wrote and directed  Bobby ,  The Way and 2018's  The Public .

Estevez has a son and daughter with ex-girlfriend Carey Salley , and he was married to Paula Abdul  from 1992 until 1994.

Georgetown grad Jules in  St. Elmo's Fire is having an affair with her married boss, never a good idea. But at least she has the love of her friends to get her through. This is the only Brat Pack film that Moore was in, but the affiliation stuck—not least because she dated costar   Estevez for awhile.

The author of the juicy memoir Inside Out became a major movie star, starring in Ghost ,  G.I. Jane ,  Now & Then ,  Indecent Proposal , Disclosure and  Charlie's Angels: Full Throttl. She earned what at the time was the highest-ever paycheck for a female actor when she was paid $12.5 million for 1996's Striptease .

More recently Moore was in the Peacock drama Brave New World , the Amazon miniseries Dirty Diana , and FX's  Feud: Capote vs. the Swans ( with Ringwald ).

Moore has three daughters— Rumer , Scout and Tallulah — with ex-husband (but still dear family member) Bruce Willis . She married Ashton Kutcher   in 2005 but they separated in 2011 and finalized their divorce two years later.

After playing the adrift Billy in St. Elmo's Fire , the Outsiders alum and Moore reunited immediately in the Edward Zwick -directed  About Last Night .

Lowe's flourishing career and brooding-leading-man potential on display in the 1990 thriller Bad Influence  took a hit after a sex tape scandal. But he rebounded with the help of a self-mocking appeareance on Saturday Night Live and stand-out comedic villain turns in 1992's Wayne's World  and 1995's Tommy Boy (both produced by his pal Lorne Michaels ).

He also was in The Stand with Ringwald, but since playing Sam Seaborn on The West Wing starting in 1999, Lowe's never been off TV. Brothers and Sisters , Californication and Parks and Recreation (inspiring his podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe ) are among his 21st century highlights. He also had a critically acclaimed, unrecognizable turn playing Liberace 's plastic surgeon in the 2013 HBO movie Behind the Candelabra .

In 2020, Lowe joined the sprawling Ryan Murphy   empire as the commander of an Austin firehouse in 911: Lone Star . When not saving the day, he cocreated and stars in the Netflix comedy Unstable  with son John Owen Lowe  and hosts the game show  The Floor .

The actor also shares son Matthew Lowe with his wife since 1991, Sheryl Berkoff .

He may have pivoted the most, playing wounded bad boy John Bender in The Breakfast Club and then a burgeoning Republican yuppie who's ready to settle down and marry girlfriend Leslie ( Ally Sheedy ) in  St. Elmo's Fire .

In 1985, Nelson, Estevez and Lowe were all considered for the role of cocaine-addled life's-a-party pal Tad Allaghash in the big-screen adaptation of Jay McInerney 's très '80s novel  Bright Lights, Big City opposite Tom Cruise as Jamie, a magazine fact-checker on a bender who's questioning his choices, but the role ended up going to Kiefer Sutherland . (And Michael J. Fox took over when Cruise exited the project.)

Post-Pack highlights include a Golden Globe nomination for the 1988 miniseries Billionaire Boys Club  and playing the slick record executive in  Airheads , Brooke Shields ' boss on  Suddenly Susan and a shady label executive who's a rival to Terrence Howard 's Lucious Lyon on  Empire .

Nelson played the father of his Billionaire Boys Club  character Joe Hunt in the 2018 feature-film adaptation of the same name, and more recent film credits include Save Christmas , Dante's Hotel and South of Hope Street .

McCarthy played adrift Georgetown University grad Kevin in St. Elmo's Fire— and then, in Pretty in Pink , rich high school senior Blane, who falls for Ringwald's outcast-because-she's-not-rich-and-makes-her-own-clothes (i.e. way too cool for this school) Andie.

Then it was onto playing a window dresser whose muse comes to life in Mannequin and a disaffected college student in Less Than Zero (with RDJ and Pretty in Pink costar James Spader , both considered Brat Pack-adjacent), while Weekend at Bernie 's remains a no-explanation-necessary reference.

McCarthy's film highlights after the 1980s included The Joy Luck Club  and  Mulholland Falls , but he also leaned into theater (he was in Long Day's Journey Into Night when he told  People in 1999 that the Brat Pack wasn't a real thing) and became a busy director, working on Gossip Girl ,  Orange Is the New Black ,  The Blacklist ,  The Sinner  and  Good Girls .

In 2022, he joined The Resident  for a season and was in the 2023 indie film Grace Point  with John Owen Lowe.

McCarthy is also an award-winning travel writer and authored the YA novel Just Fly Away  before delving into the Brat Pack tag's effect on his life in his 2021 memoir Brat: An '80s Story .

The New Jersey native further explored the cultural impact of the moniker in the 2024 documentary Brats .

McCarthy has a son from his first marriage to college sweetheart Carol Schneider , and a daughter with Dolores Rice , his wife since 2011.

From dweeb in  Sixteen Candles to more estimable nerds in  The Breakfast Club  and  Weird Science , Hall had his niche in the John Hughes world (including as Ringwald's real-life boyfriend for a short while)—so it was weird to see him as the ill-fated bully in Edward Scissorhands . 

First, however, in 1985 Hall became the youngest-ever ensemble member of Saturday Night Live   when he joined the cast at 17—the same season RDJ was on, and Hall is godfather to the Oscar winner's son Indio .

Like RDJ, Hall only stayed on SNL for one season, but acted steadily in small roles in the 1990s before playing Microsoft founder Bill Gates in the much-talked-about 1999 TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley .

Hall is the only member of the Brat Pack who ended up unrecognizable in an all-grown-up way when he resurfaced as Gates, and then starred in the USA supernatural drama  The Dead Zone , based on the Stephen King novel, from 2002 until 2007. His film highlights include The Dark Knight ,  Foxcatcher , Live by Night  and  War Machine , and he popped up as Principal Featherhead on  Riverdale and in recurring roles on The Goldbergs and Bosch: Legacy . 

Next up is the June 2024 Netflix movie Trigger Warning with Jessica Alba .

As for onetime girlfriend Ringwald, Hall told Page Six in February 2020, "She's wonderful, a great lady. We've been friends since and I've seen her over the years."    

Hall married longtime girlfriend Lucia Oskerova in 2020 and they welcomed a son together in June 2023.

The WarGames alum played basket case Allison in The Breakfast Club , followed by college grad Leslie in  St. Elmo's Fire— and she was a bridesmaid when Moore married Willis in 1987.

"I'm finally popular with these guys," she recalled thinking in a 2010 interview with NPR's Weekend Edition. "I was not popular in high school. I have some real friends. And we get to work. I was just blissfully happy. And I really do love those people."

Sheedy starred in the 1986 comedy  Short Circuit (her acting was singled out by the New York Times ), played John Candy 's love interest in the 1992 comedy Only the Lonely and mined her own admitted experience with a sleeping pill addiction for the acclaimed 1998 indie  High Art .

Her TV appearances have included Oz ,  The Dead Zone (with Hall),  CSI ,  Kyle XY  and  Pysch , plus she appeared in  Shutter Island, Welcome to the Rileys with Kristen Stewart and  X-Men: Apocalypse .

Ringwald guest-starred on Sheedy's Freeform series Single Drunk Female in 2022, telling  EW , "We have so much history we barely need to even speak. The challenge is trying not to cry! Getting to be on set with her again was one of the best parts of my year."

• Rob Lowe: Brat Pack to Backpacks

Many young stars were rising in Hollywood during the 1980s. It was one of the most critical decades in movie production due to its switch from focusing on films directed at adults to tween and teen flicks.

The '80s was an excellent decade for young movie fans. However, some movie stars, including Rob Lowe, had less fun, especially after journalist David Blum labeled them "The Brat Pack" in 1985.

Here's how Rob Lowe went from being a Brat Packer to being a family man and changed how he was perceived in Hollywood.

The Humble Origins of the Lowes

The term "Hollywood Icon" didn't always apply to Rob Lowe.

He was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on March 17, 1964, but spent most of his childhood living in Dayton, Ohio.

Related: The Brat Pack: Dissension in the Ranks

His dad was a lawyer, and his mom was a teacher.

When he was still a baby, he lost the ability to hear in one ear due to contracting the mumps, but that has never slowed him down.

Eventually, his younger brother, Chad Lowe , was born, and the family was seemingly complete.

Unfortunately, Rob was only four, and Chad was just an infant when the family unit fell apart.

Their parents divorced, and the boys stayed primarily with their mother.

She eventually found a new love interest.

Meanwhile, Rob was bitten by the acting bug at age 10, and young Chad was also interested in performing.

The two didn't have many opportunities to act in Dayton, but after their mom remarried, they all relocated to Malibu, California.

Eventually, the boys started appearing on TV shows and in movies.

Rob started on the short-lived TV show A New Kind of Family (1979-1980) starring Eileen Brennan.

He appeared in all 11 series episodes.

It's hard to say which brother had the better start on TV because Chad's first series, Spencer (1984-1985), lasted for 14 episodes. However, he left the series halfway through and was replaced by Ross Harris.

Related: Classic TV is the Perfect Binge Watch For So Many Reasons

What is certain is that three years after A New Kind of Family ended, Rob got the first of several prominent roles playing Sodapop in the film The Outsiders (1983).

Meanwhile, Chad appeared in several movies before landing one of the roles for which he became most famous, that of Jesse McKenna on the series Life Goes On with Kellie Martin, who has since appeared in several Hallmark Mystery movies .

Life Goes On ran from 1989 to 1993, but Chad first appeared as a regular on it beginning in 1991.

Rob Lowe Made a Big Hollywood Splash

The Outsiders, which also starred Patrick Swayze, later of Roadhouse, hit theaters, and Rob and his costars became instant hits.

After The Outsiders, he appeared in several films in quick succession, including Class (1983), Oxford Blues (1984), and St. Elmo's Fire (1985).

Thanks to those, Rob didn't take long to become a teen idol.

St Elmo's Fire, in particular, helped truly skyrocket him to stardom, along with his costars.

It also led to his induction into one of the most iconic groups in Hollywood history, the Brat Pack.

When St. Elmo's Fire premiered, I was only four years old, so I was too young to idolize Rob Lowe.

Instead, in the early 1990s, I became enamored with his brother Chad's work on Life Goes On.

Nevertheless, I recall teens nationwide idolizing Rob for years and his image gracing teen magazine covers everywhere.

Related: The Handmaid's Tale Season 6 - Everything We Know So Far

Depending on their genders and sexual preferences, it seemed like every teen wanted to be Rob Lowe or date him, especially by the mid to late 1980s.

His good looks and charm made him famous quickly and kept his teen idol status firmly cemented, but there was another factor.

That factor was his unwilling membership in the Brat Pack .

The Initial Impact of the Brat Pack Label on Rob Lowe

The year was 1985, and reporter David Blum was keen to write a New York Magazine article , supposedly about Rob's fellow The Outsiders and St. Elmo's Fire actor, Emilio Estevez.

Estevez agreed to the interview and invited Blum to the Hard Rock Cafe with himself, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson.

Nelson disliked Blum from the start and thought nothing good could come of the evening.

He had reason to be suspicious because Blum wrote about several stars, including many not present, in that article.

Blum also scathingly reviewed Nelson's St. Elmo's Fire performance and called the three men and others not present " The Brat Pack ," a nickname that has stuck with many of them ever since.

Despite the overwhelmingly negative spin of Blum's article, it didn't paint Rob in the worst light.

"The most beautiful face," as Blum called him when comparing him to the rest of Blum's appointed Brat Pack members, left the bar shortly after midnight to go home to his girlfriend.

Although Blum did mention the men tossing back drinks and ogling young women, that was hardly the image of a brat but rather more of a young Hollywood hunk blowing off steam who knew when to call it a night.

Related: 21 Sexy Shirtless Men of TV

Yet, the nickname did affect him and everyone else mentioned in the article because the public latched onto it almost immediately.

As one of the so-called brats, Rob suddenly found himself a member of a club he didn't ask to join.

He also found he was being encouraged to distance himself from his fellow Brat Packers, both those mentioned in the article and those added to the list by the public later.

Rob Lowe and the Sex Tape Scandal Recovery

Despite avoiding the worst of the negative impact of the "Brat Pack" label for a few years, Rob Lowe suddenly found himself in the middle of a sex tape scandal in 1988.

Back when VHS tapes were still a thing, it was typical for consenting adults to videotape their sexual encounters.

The issue Rob had was that he was in Atlanta, Georgia, one evening and supposedly thought he was taking two consenting adult women back to his hotel room for a fun time.

Unfortunately for him, like a plot out of Law & Order: SVU , one turned out to be underage. Then, they both conspired to take the tape from his room and later leak it to the media.

Upon finding out one of the girls was underage, Rob spoke to the girl's parents and reached a settlement agreement that kept him out of jail.

In a 2019 People interview and several others over the years, Rob has opened up about that sex tape scandal.

Although the scandal was far from enjoyable, he has always maintained that he is glad it happened.

It caused him to take a hard look at his life, which included drug use at the time.

By 1990, within two years of the incident, he had gotten clean and sober.

As of 2024, he remains sober and is even the face of healthy living in commercials for the Atkins dieting plan.

His transformation from an indulgent young adult to a sober actor taking his life seriously paid off.

He married Sheryl Berkoff in 1991.

They had a son, Matthew, in 1993 and another, John Owen , in 1995.

Within a few more years, he had gone from Brat Pack to loading backpacks and packing school lunches for his kids.

To this day, he remains a devoted family man.

Rob Lowe's More Recent Professional Successes

In a weird way, the need to focus on getting his life together and the switch over to family life probably helped him handle the Brat Pack stigma better than some of his fellow actors from our favorite 1980s flicks, like Andrew McCarthy , who struggled with the label for years.

In a trailer for the 2024 Brats documentary, the two are seen reminiscing about their Brat Pack days, and Rob is seen giggling about what was a very stressful time for many of them.

Related: The Brat Pack Movie Explosion of the 1980s

It also didn't hurt that Rob appeared in another wildly popular movie in 1992, Wayne's World, which seemed to revitalize his career quickly.

Since then, he has remained a busy actor, racking up over 100 on-screen credits.

Rob's portrayal of Sam Seaborn on The West Wing (1999-2006) opposite Martin Sheen, dad of fellow Brat Packer Emilio Estevez, garnered him a whole new group of fans, myself included.

Beginning in 2006, he also had long back-to-back stints on Brothers & Sisters and Parks & Recreation . The latter ended in 2015.

Today, he is known for playing Owen Strand on 9-1-1: Lonestar , the fifth season of which will begin airing in the fall of 2024.

Chad Lowe also guest-starred on the show alongside his brother.

Aside from that, Rob recently hosted the first season of the game show The Floor, which Fox has renewed for two more seasons.

From Brat Pack to backpacks and beyond, he has proven he has both true character and Hollywood staying power.

Do you have a favorite Rob Lowe role from his Brat Pack days?

What do you think about how he handled the Brat Pack moniker?

Comment below and tell us all about it.

We'd love your thoughts on one of Hollywood's eternally hot hunks.

Jessica Kosinski is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on X .

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