Rob Lowe has joked making his sex tape "20 years later" would have helped his career.
Rob Lowe
The 'St. Elmo's Fire' actor was embroiled in a scandal in 1989 when he was sued by the mother of a 16-year-old girl he made the X-rated movie with the year before, though he claimed he didn't know the teenager was underage, and reflecting on the incident now, the 55-year-old star joked his biggest "f**k up" was the footage being released too soon.
Speaking on his podcast 'WTF', Marc Maron said to his guest: "You're doing good, everything's going your way and then this video tape shows up and there you are naked... "
Rob quipped: "The real f**k up was that I didn't wait 20 years later to do it where it would have helped my career. [I was] one billion percent ahead of the curve."
While Rob - who settled the lawsuit and didn't face any criminal charges - remembered being subjected to a backlash, he can't recall many of the details.
He said: "It's hard for me to remember a lot of it. But, my notion of it was it was all, like, happening so fast, and that it was just sort of putting one foot in front of the other."
And the former 'West Wing' star - who has sons Matthew and John with wife Sheryl Berkoff - doesn't regret any of the controversial events to have happened in his life.
He said: "Here's the thing, between that and some of the other things that have happened in my life, I would have no memoir to write, and I'd have no one-man show.... Without those things, I would have none of those."
Meanwhile, Rob has also admitted he doesn't regret turning down the role of Dr. Mark Shepherd - aka McDreamy - in 'Grey's Anatomy', despite letting the role go to Patrick Dempsey meaning he lost out on a lot of money.
He admitted: "Dude, I turned down 'Grey's Anatomy'. To play McDreamy.
"That's probably cost me $70 million. Eh, it's just money.
"Listen, at the end of the day it was like, I watched in when it came out. And when they started calling the handsome doctor 'McDreamy,' I was like, 'Yeah, that's not for me.'"
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