Hollywood tour guide mistakes movie icon for TV sitcom legend in Los Angeles
Brat Pack movie icon Rob Lowe was left amusingly nonplussed when a Hollywood tour guide mistook him for Full House star John Stamos.
The St Elmo's Fire actor was out in Beverly Hills when he was spotted by one of the many guided tours which take in the homes of the stars.
The leader of the tour incorrectly identified Lowe as the sitcom star, prompting the West Wing alum to approach and ask the tour group who he was.
Fortunately, the tourists were more switched on than their guide and correctly identified Lowe, who was thanked for being a good sport about the mix-up.
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Daily Mail
a day ago
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Jennifer Aniston has finished renovations on her $15M Montecito, California mansion she purchased last year. has obtained a photo of the dwelling after massive changes were made earlier this year. The biggest addition to the spread which sits on one acre is the new swimming pool which in the backyard where there was only a lawn before. Other renovations include fresh landscaping with cacti and a generous patio area where lounge chairs sit. In the main house there are new black-framed windows and updated balconies. This is where the star will 'chill out' this summer after a harrowing spring that included a break-in attempt at her $21M mansion in Bel-Air, California. 'Jen is happy to have a safe place to run to where she can let her hair down,' a source told last month. 'Though she loves Los Angeles because it is where she grew up, she is craving more of a country setting these days away from the noise.' Her Montecito neighbor include friends like Gwyneth Paltrow and Rob Lowe. Other neighbors in the Montecito area include Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, as well as Katy Perry. Zoe Saldana recently splurged under $20M on an estate there as well. And it helps that her friends are more than happy to spend time with her in Montecito. 'Her pals like Jimmy Kimmel and Jason Bateman will visit and keep her company and help her make it a home for the summer,' said a source. Having the gate of her Bel Air home did a 'number' on her, said a source. 'She is flipped out,' said the pal. 'It's a bad feeling knowing someone wants to break into your sanctuary. It's such a shame that happened.' Aniston bought the Montecito house from Oprah Winfrey in September 2022 in an off-market deal for $14.8M. The 4,320-square-foot home built in 1999 has four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. And there is a pool house, cabana, or even a guesthouse. The backyard, formerly featuring manicured lawns, now boasts a sizable swimming pool, as seen in the latest photos. The swimming pool appears to be nearly complete. Surrounding it are large, white planter areas filled with vibrant plants. The property's exterior has been altered as well, notably with the replacement of blue windows by modern, white-framed designs. The upper-level balconies have also been renovated, now featuring dark metal railings. While renovations are still ongoing, outdoor furniture has been arranged on both the balconies and the raised patio overlooking the pool. Aniston's expansive house comprises several structures: an L-shaped main residence overlooking the swimming pool and gardens; a smaller building adjacent to the poolside patio; and a garage. It is not known if Aniston has decided to add or change any of the interior rooms. In August of last year, the home was pictured during a substantial renovation process. Aerial photos of her sprawling farmhouse showed she demolished the property's backyard to make way for an inground pool. Winfrey, a longtime Montecito resident, previously acquired the property in 2021 as part of a larger one-acre estate, paying $10.5 million. However, just a year later, Winfrey divided and sold the estate. Aniston purchased one portion for $14.8 million, while Winfrey's longtime friend, Bob Greene, acquired the other for an estimated $2.3 million. Aniston's new abode has 'picturesque ocean and mountain views, multiple terraces, landscaped gardens, and a massive motorcourt, all set on a private lot nestled among oak trees at the end of a long gated driveway,' according to Architectural Digest. The home has quite a bit of privacy on its heavily wooded premises, grassy lawns and a enough parking to easily accommodate fifteen cars. It's not the only home Aniston owns - she also has a $20.97 million mansion in Bel Air. In early a man who allegedly crashed his car through the gate of Aniston's home has been accused of harassment. 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A public information officer from the Los Angeles Police Department told PEOPLE: 'There was a security guard on premises who was able to detain that suspect until officers arrived, at which time they took him into custody without incident. The resident was home at the time.' The authorities noted that while the suspect has sustained minor injuries, no one else was hurt in the incident.
Daily Mail
28-05-2025
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Rob Lowe, 61, fans go 'bonkers' over surprise detail in shirt-free photo with mini-me son, 29
Rob Lowe fans went nuts over a new eye-popping photo the '80s hunk shared to Instagram on Tuesday. The 61-year-old St Elmo's Fire actor and former Brat Packer had on shorts as he stood next to his look-alike 29-year-old son John Owen while in a gym. It was surprising what great shape both of the actors - who costarred for two seasons on the show Unstable - were in as they looked tanned and toned. And it was cute that both men were flexing their arm muscles and sucking in their tummies for the camera while wearing gold necklaces. But there was a surprising detail that caught followers off guard. Can you guess what it is? From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. It was a large new tattoo on Rob's arm. Fans were shocked that Rob had a massive tattoo on his arm that does not seem to go with his clean public image. 'I am going bonkers, Robby with a monster tat, oh hell no,' said one fan. Some fans found it sexy: 'Rob just got a little hotter now that I know he has that nice tat.' Another said: 'It's hot like Johnny Depp hot.' Then there was this: 'He looks like a foxy sailor from Boston with that ink scrawl.' The tattoo is not the same one he showed off to Ellen DeGeneres on her talk show several years ago; that one is on his other arm. The big, dark one seems to be new. He did not have it when he posed shirtless on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2018. And he did not display the tattoo when he was seen on a boat in 2024. But he did have it in April of this year. Fans also liked his son's mark that featured a long-stemmed wine glass: 'Tat like dad but smaller, how cute.' Rob seemed to be having fun sharing the rare shirt-free photo: 'Lowe family tradition: self indulgent shirtless gym photos,' the star joked. Lowe's older son Matthew, 32, took a jab at his brother as he said, 'Why does it look like you photoshopped your head on @johnnylowe.' Rob shares his two sons with his wife of many decades, jewelry designer Sheryl Berkoff. Rob is staying busy by hosting the podcast Literally! With Rob Lowe, where he regularly welcomes A-list guests including Adam Scott, Jason Isaac, and Kristin Davis. He is also the face of the Tubi game show The Floor. Earlier this month Lowe shared vivid memories of his grandmother Mim's battle with breast cancer. The actor, known for his role in 9-1-1: Lone Star' shared a close bond with his grandmother during his childhood, and has said his grandmom's health fight became a pivotal experience that would shape his life and the way he approaches cancer awareness today. He told People: 'My memory of it is like it happened yesterday because of this sort of uproar it caused in our family. In those days, the odds were not good. I 100 percent remember our family feeling lost, wishing that there was more that could be done.' Rob affectionately refers to his grandmother as 'my beloved,' and recounts the profound impact her illness had on their family. As Mim's condition worsened, doctors told her to 'get her affairs in order' in a grim diagnosis that devastated the family. But just as it seemed there were no options left, Mim's fate took a dramatic turn when she was accepted into a clinical trial for breast cancer treatments. Rob also explained how the clinical trial changed everything for his grandmother, saying: 'There were multiple times where she had run out of options and just at that moment there was a clinical trial (that) changed the course of her cancer journey.' Mim's survival story became a beacon of hope for Rob and his family. The actor said: 'She survived and thrived longer than anyone with her type of cancer in those days.' He added Mim's success in the trial not only defied the odds but also paved the way for treatments that would later become standard care. Here the actor is seen right with his longtime friend Kevin Costner Inspired by his grandmother's resilience, Rob has partnered with Eli Lilly and Company to promote awareness about the importance of clinical trials into cancer treatments. Despite the transformative role these trials played in Mim's survival, only seven percent of cancer patients in the United States participate in them. Rob hopes to change that, and added: 'My great grandmother, my grandmother Mim, and my mother all had breast cancer and they helped raise me. 'They raised me and now, in their memory, I can raise awareness about the importance of doing clinical trials.' Rob stressed every cancer patient's journey is different, but said the key to finding the right treatment is taking the initiative to ask about options.
The Guardian
24-05-2025
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Hush over Hollywood: why has it become so hard to make films in Los Angeles?
When Adam Scott was working on the hit TV show Parks and Recreation in the early 2010s, the Los Angeles studio where the show was filmed was packed – 'every stage was filled and working'. These days, he told his former co-star Rob Lowe in a much-discussed recent podcast conversation, 'it's quiet over there' – in part because 'it's just too expensive to shoot here'. 'Nothing shoots in Los Angeles,' Scott said. 'Nothing!' Lowe replied. The two television stars are a case in point. Severance, Scott's hit sci-fi streaming show, has been largely filmed in New York and New Jersey. And this year, both actors are scheduled to shoot projects in Ireland – Scott for a horror film with an Irish director, but Lowe as the host of an American game show with American contestants. The reason, Lowe argued, was money, particularly the massive tax credits that other jurisdictions offer film studios to bring their productions outside of Hollywood. 'It's cheaper to bring 100 American people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox, past the sound stages, and do it there,' Lowe said. Hollywood has long faced competition for its film production business, both from other US states like New York, Georgia, New Mexico, and from the UK and European countries. Many of those places offer generous tax credits to productions who shoot in their localities. The UK in recent years has seen a major boost in prestige film and TV productions set there, with Britain earning the nickname 'Brollywood'. Even the film Barbie, a quintessentially California tale, was partially shot in the Warner Bros studios in Hertfordshire. But in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles fires this January, this drop in the number of productions shot in Hollywood has begun to spark panic and anger within the industry. Recent statistics highlight the reason for concern. The number of productions shot on location in Los Angeles has dropped more than 30% in the past five years, with 2024 recording one of the lowest number of total shoot days in decades, second only to 2020, during the disruptions of the coronavirus pandemic. According to Film LA, a nonprofit that tracks local production, only 20% of shows for North American audiences are now filmed in California. Los Angeles's struggles come amid a larger contraction in the global film and TV industry, with studios pulling back from the big-budget era of the streaming wars amid broader economic uncertainty. But some in the industry worry that California discounted its global competitors for too long – and that it may now pay a permanent price. 'When it's a homegrown industry, you sometimes take it a little bit for granted. You don't recognize that there's a possibility that it can dissipate, or go elsewhere,' said Rebecca Rhine, the western executive director of the Directors Guild of America, and the president of the Entertainment Union Coalition, an alliance of seven major Hollywood unions. 'I think it was maybe some arrogance, and maybe some lack of foresight.' A large coalition of Hollywood workers are now rallying for California to increase its tax credits for film and TV shoots from 20 to 25% to 35%, to make the state more competitive with other states and countries that offer as much as 40% in tax credits. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed more than doubling California's current film and TV tax credit program from $330m to $750m. The need is dire, according to workers in many segments of the California industry. Officials with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (Iatse) estimate that in the past three years, their members alone have seen roughly 18,000 jobs disappear, most of those jobs in California. 'The last couple of years have been pretty devastating,' said Malakhi Simmons, the vice-president of Iatse local 728, representing studio electrical lighting technicians. 'Our members are used to jobs starting and stopping. There's a culture of hanging on till the next job, [but] with the contraction of the industry, those jobs haven't come back.' Donald Trump's contribution to the debate was a recent social media suggestion that he protect Hollywood by imposing tariffs on films shot outside the US, a stray remark that has roiled an already chaotic situation. A-list stars and blue-collar Hollywood workers are now pushing to bring more production back to Los Angeles, with the help of streamlining and tax subsidies at the city, state, and even national level. 'There are so many people I know who do everything they can do shoot here, and their perspective is, 'It doesn't even have to get me exactly there on the [tax credit] percentage, it just has to be close enough, because on everything else, California wins,' said Susan Sprung, the CEO of the Producers Guild. But with Los Angeles facing a $1bn budget shortfall, and California as a whole facing a deficit of $12bn, and social programs of all kinds facing big cuts, not everyone is on board with devoting hundreds of millions to boost Hollywood productions. Alexandra Pechman, a Los Angeles-based writer and director, is one of nearly 25,000 Hollywood workers and other locals who backed a petition early this year asking California officials to offer three years of expanded tax credits to productions filming in Los Angeles in the wake of this winter's historically damaging wildfires. 'You learn very quickly, as a screenwriter or director in Los Angeles, seeing your peers constantly leaving the city, that there's incentives to be filming pretty much anywhere other than LA,' said Pechman, one of the co-founders of the Stay in LA movement. Preparing the budget for her independent feature film, The Murderous Miss Highsmith, had given her a first-hand look at the complex math of international tax credits. Her film, which she is still laying the groundwork to shootexplores the fraught life of Patricia Highsmith, the author of The Talented Mr Ripley. It's set in Italy, Santa Fe and London, but to meet its budget, the film will have to shoot in a single location, one approved by the project's financial backers. Pechman considered a range of European countries, looking at 'what tax incentives program offers us the best route'. She recalls that Hungary offered a 30% rebate at the time, and Croatia also up to 30%. Italy was offering an even higher rate, but her film's financier ultimately preferred Malta, which was offering a 40% tax rebate. 'Malta will just play as those places, and we would shoot some interiors that are meant to be New York, or other cities, in Malta,' she said. For film productions to get a tax rebate, Pechman said, they need to spend a certain amount of money, but many kinds of expenses qualified, from travel agents, to lodging, to catering – 'so that's all obviously boosting the local economy'. Governments often also demand employment quotas in certain departments of the film to qualify for film productions tax rebate, so film productions bringing in technical talent from the US also need to hire a certain percentage of local talent, 'so a lot of shows end up hiring a lot of trainees'. When she was scouting in Malta last summer, she said, she met a lot of experienced local film workers 'who had come up through these trainee programs'. 'That's exactly what's not happening here [in Los Angeles],' she said. 'People are graduating from USC film school and moving to LA to start their careers, and there aren't these programs and incentives to help people get their foot in the door.' Pechman's husband is a showrunner who has shot in many different cities, from Winnipeg to Toronto to Atlanta, she said. 'He's never shot a show in LA,' except for some exterior LA shots for a show otherwise filmed in Canada. 'We just have to do something, or people are going to leave,' she added. Another big ire is permits. Getting permits to shoot across the Los Angeles area can be expensive and logistically difficult, even for smaller crews that work on documentary and commercial shoots. 'Whenever you're interfacing with the government [in LA], those systems don't totally feel like they're up to speed with the modern era,' said Aaron Ohlmann, a director and executive producer at the production company Special Order. At one recent shoot, 'we had to pay a third party $2,000 to manage those permits,' he said. At another, which was 'a quiet interview in someone's living room', he said, 'we paid $1,000 for a FilmLA monitor who did not once lift his eyes from the glow of his phone. An additional $85 went to a fire marshal who never arrived. The permit itself was $900.' Pechman said she was shocked to find that it was much easier to do a small shoot on the streets of New York City than in Los Angeles – even though virtually every part of Los Angeles sees much less foot traffic than the packed avenues of Manhattan. In many public areas of New York City, it's possible to film without a permit as long as the crew and the gear are limited, she said. 'You cannot do that in LA.' FilmLA, the nonprofit created to coordinate permitting across the many different cities of greater Los Angeles, raised its fees last year. The permitting fees and restrictions in Los Angeles are especially burdensome for film student and indie filmmakers, who argue 'it's already hard enough right now' in the industry, Pechman said, and they emerged as an important concern in Stay in LA's grassroots advocacy. FilmLA, an independent non-profit, receives no government funding, and part of its fees go to paying for the work of the agency as it coordinates permits across the many jurisdictions of the greater Los Angeles area. Paul Audley, the group's president, defended its fees as 'cost-competitive' and 'in line with regional averages', and said that 'film offices from across the world reach out to study FilmLA and how we work'. In late May, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass announced that she wanted to make it easier to film in LA, directing city departments to reduce red tape and cut some costs and fees, and make it easier to film at city-owned properties such as Griffith Observatory, changes the Los Angeles Times called 'relatively modest'. But Audley said Bass's proposal could have a big impact on fees, because 'municipal oversight is the biggest cost factor. Fully 60% of permit-related cost comes from use of public property and public safety personnel.' While some have pointed at labor cost increases as a factor in driving productions abroad, union leaders have pushed back at suggestions that wins for labor in 2023's historic double Hollywood strike have rebounded and contributed to the decline in Los Angeles production rates. 'We reject the idea that somehow paying people decent wages and providing benefits and retirements with dignity is the problem,' Rhine, the Entertainment Union Coalition head, said. 'We do not believe that wage increases have anything to do with productions moving overseas or out of state,' a spokesperson for Sag-Aftra said in a statement, saying the union attributed the recent decreases to tax incentives elsewhere, currency exchange rates, and the 'overall drop in the market demand for scripted, dramatic programming'. The big tax subsidies other countries are offering to film and TV productions came alongside a broader democratization of media production around the globe. The shift has been driven in part by the increasing quality and decreasing prices of cameras and other film technology–making production more accessible to many more people, said Ohlmann, the documentary director and producer. Decades ago, 'if you wanted to work with film, you had to come to LA: the technology was here, the people were here–anything that shakes loose rolls west', he said. 'Now, 'you have technology in the hands of storytellers, and the ability to access an audience everywhere – and you see less reason to be all collecting in a single place'. Ohlmann and his colleagues, who have done small-crew shoots in 60 countries around the world, used to plan 'completely self-contained' international shoots, with every crew member and camera flown in. Now, he said, 'the world has gotten smaller, and it's easier to travel lighter, because you know you'll be able to pick up talent and gear more easily'. When Werner Herzog was in the Amazon shooting his 1972 epic Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 'and their director of photography gets yellow fever or their film camera gets dropped into the bottom of the Amazon, they were out of luck', Ohlmann said. Today, a similar film shoot could probably find a replacement camera, and someone's cousin who knew how to operate it, 'a couple miles from where they were shooting'. Even through this globalization of the film industry, LA has remained a major gathering place for film workers. Though they have technology that theoretically allows editors to work remotely 'from anywhere in the world', most editors that Special Order hires are still in New York or Los Angeles, because 'it's still hard to match the level of talent you see in LA.' But locals are now worrying that the LA's creative workforce is being pushed to a tipping point, after five years of economic hardship, first during the pandemic, then as production halted during the writers' and actors' strikes, and now, as fears about artificial intelligence stealing jobs overlap with the terror and devastation of southern California's growing wildfires. Sky-high housing costs across California had already made daily life a struggle for most people trying to work in Hollywood: in Los Angeles, a family of three with an annual income of more than $100,000 a year is now considered 'low income', and the median price for a home is more than $1m. The destruction of thousands of homes in January's wildfires only made the local housing crisis worse. About 300 Iatse union members lost their homes to the fires, Simmons said. Across the broader entertainment union community, he said, the number was at least 1,000 members. 'Our members are really hurting,' he said. Longtime workers 'are running out of savings, moving to other states or staying with family'. Newer workers who have come into the field more recently 'are losing faith'. 'What our members need most are jobs,' he said. 'Jobs create that stability to rebuild.' A wide swathe of unions have backed increases in California's tax credits for film and TV production, with workers showing up to lobby state lawmakers in Sacramento, and sending an estimated 200,000 letters in support of the increases, arguing that the tax credits are not a handout to big corporations, but an essential local jobs program. Not everyone believes the tax credits are the answer to the industry's problems. Michael Thom, a University of Southern California professor who researches the economic impact of these tax credits across the US, submitted testimony to state lawmakers that multiple peer reviewed studies found that the 'incentives fail to stimulate enough economic activity to justify their substantial cost'. Thom said he was not surprised that lawmakers in New York, California, and elsewhere continued to support spending hundreds of millions of public dollars on film industry subsidies despite their lackluster returns. 'Film incentives, like those for other industries, are hard to resist: they allow politicians to give away taxpayer money (not their own, of course) and label themselves a 'job creator',' Thom wrote in an email. 'Couple that with intense lobbying from the industry, unions, and some bureaucrats, and it's a foregone conclusion that politicians will continue to waste money on these things.' Corey Jackson, a Democratic member of the state assembly with a doctoral degree in social work, has also spoken out about the need to prioritize core social services, not film industry subsidies, during California's budget crisis. 'If we were back in the period where we have more money than we can spend, this would be a no-brainer,' Jackson told the Los Angeles Times. But in the current economic environment, 'this should not just be a slam-dunk'. Union leaders and others argue that the film industry is more deeply embedded in Southern California's economy than in other states, and that more film production will have a ripple effect, helping everyone from florists to hotel workers to the mechanics who manage the airplanes that big budget films blow up. 'It's an emergency,' Pechman said. 'Hollywood could be a place where people go to the Walk of Fame and say: 'Oooh, this is where people used to make movies.''
