Rob Lowe has revealed that Tom Cruise once stood between him and two of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters — and he apparently still remembers it.
The 62-year-old actor told the New York Postthat he wanted roles in both Top Gunand Jerry Maguire, only to discover Cruise had already landed them.
“That dastardly Tom Cruise was always a nemesis,” Lowe joked, recalling how he read the scripts before finding out his former The Outsidersco-star had been cast.
Cruise and Lowe shared the screen in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 classic The Outsiders, alongside some ridiculously star-packed young cast that included Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon and Patrick Swayze.
But while Lowe has spent decades building his own impressive résumé, there’s one iconic role he definitely didn’t come close to getting: Ferris Bueller.
Lowe shut down the long-running rumor that he was considered for the title character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which ultimately went to Matthew Broderick.
“No, that’s a big regret,” he said, explaining that director John Hughes simply wasn’t interested in what he was offering.
“John Hughes never got what I was selling,” Lowe said. “I met with John once and it’s not like he didn’t have a lot of parts I could have done. When you really look at it, there were more than a few parts, multiple parts in some movies. Never, phone never rang.”
So, in an alternate Hollywood timeline, Lowe could have been flying fighter jets, playing Jerry Maguire — or skipping school in Chicago.
Instead, Tom Cruise apparently kept collecting the roles. Again.
2026-09-06 08:44:00
