Latest news with #BratPack
7NEWS
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- 7NEWS
Iconic Hollywood star Rob Lowe, 61, sends fans into a meltdown over shirtless selfie with lookalike son Johnny
Rob Lowe has been melting hearts since the 1980s. And the St Elmo's Fire actor, 61, proved he still has it when he posed alongside his son, Johnny, 29, in a shirtless photo. The elder Lowe pumped out his chest in the steamy selfie, which looked to be taken in his home gym. Both men looked to be in good shape, with Rob posing in a pair of shorts while Johnny wore just a pair of jeans, joggers and a cap. Lowe Sr's large tattoo was also on display in the photo. 'Lowe family tradition: self-indulgent shirtless gym photos,' they wrote on the image shared to both of their Instagram accounts. Fans were thrilled by the photo, with a number of them remarking on Lowe Sr's youthful appearance. 'Some family traditions are meant to be shared with the general public. We thank you,' one person wrote. 'Beast mode,' another wrote. 'Love the father son duo! You guys should do a max set of pull-ups and see what the numbers are,' another added. Lowe has two children with his wife, Sheryl Berkoff, who he married in 1991. Matt Lowe, the couple's eldest child, is 32. Johnny has followed his father into films. They starred in the 2023 TV series, Unstable, together. The fworkplace comedy follows a socially shy son Jackson, played by Johnny, who works alongside his egocentric father Ellis in a high-tech bio research facility. Rob Lowe has had many incarnations in his career, rising to fame as a Brat Pack star of the 1980s. He appeared in 1983's The Outsiders, Wayne's World, Tommy Boy, and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Stream free on
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Brats' director Andrew McCarthy reflects on Brat Pack legacy, reuniting with '80s icons, and possible ‘St. Elmo's Fire' revival
"The movie is really about the passing of time," Brats director Andrew McCarthy tells Gold Derby. "I turned 60 not that long ago and I realized that I had begun to look at events of my life in a different way than I used to." For the first time in decades, McCarthy reunites with fellow Brat Packers Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and Ally Sheedy, along with other stars of that era like Jon Cryer, Timothy Hutton, and Lea Thompson, to discuss their rise to stardom in the 1980s and how the term "Brat Pack" — coined by journalist David Blum in an article for New York Magazine — impacted their careers. More from GoldDerby 'Karate Kid: Legends' knocked as 'uninspired' and 'unnecessary' by critics 'There's no skimming a Wes Anderson script': 'The Phoenician Scheme' cast on working with the director 'The worst has already happened, so now I have everything to gain': Meagan Good on love, loss, and empowering women in 'Forever' Reflecting further, McCarthy says his fascination lies less with the Brat Pack itself and more with how perspectives on life evolve with time. "When I was 22, we hated it — all of us," he says. "We felt stigmatized — it was very limiting. It was long before it became this soft and fuzzy, incredibly affectionate moniker that it is now. Somewhere along the line, I realized this was perhaps the best professional blessing of my life and nothing had changed except my relationship to it. I wanted to go seek out the other guys and gals and see if their experience was similar." McCarthy says the greatest surprise in making the movie was realizing how much affection the actors had for each other. "It was not the case back in the day," he reveals. "We were all very young, scared and competitive. Now, so much time has gone by so, who cares? We were the only ones in this club we never asked to join. All we had to do is look at each other and we had this recognition. Someone asked me, 'Do you want to send me a list of questions first?' and I said, 'I don't have any questions. I just want to come talk to you. I imagine when we just look at each other we will have a lot to say.' I didn't want to make a talking heads movie — I wanted to just go see these people and talk to them." Hulu The director's goal was to show what the Brat Pack felt like from the inside — a very different perspective from what outsiders perceived. "I wanted viewers to nod and think, 'I don't have the Brat Pack, but I can substitute [my own group or experience] in my life.' I was hoping to create that identification with the viewer by making the film a subjective and open experience." According to McCarthy, time hasn't fundamentally changed anyone in the group. "They had become themselves, only more so," he says with a chuckle. "Rob, at the beginning, was no more of a fan of it than any of us, but Rob is a very savvy guy. He realized sooner than a lot of us that this is a beautiful thing. We had become the avatars of youth for a certain demographic and a certain generation. That's a beautiful thing. When people come up to me and talk about Pretty in Pink or St. Elmo's Fire, pretty quickly their eyes glaze over. They're talking to themselves in their own youth — they're not really talking to me anymore. What I can do for them and for myself is just receive them. It took me a long time to realize what a gift that was." Hulu McCarthy recalls that Demi Moore was the first person to agree to participate in the film. "It was very uncomplicated," he recalls. "With other people it was a bit like herding cats. When I called the writer of the article, David Blum, who I had never had any contact with, his first question was, 'What's your agenda?' I said, 'I don't have an agenda. My agenda is to find out what your experience was.' He, in a certain way, was like the fifth Beatle. It affected his life and his career as drastically as it affected ours." Not everyone from the Brat Pack wanted to participate in the film, which McCarthy acknowledges. For instance, Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson are absent from the project. "It was proof of concept," McCarthy says. "This really affected our lives. Forty years later, some people still don't want to talk about it. That's really interesting." McCarthy says he's not sure if Ringwald or Nelson watched his film, but he has spoken to them since. "I didn't ask, 'Hey, did you see the movie you didn't want to be in?' That's their business. The movie was made with love for everybody. If they didn't want to do it that's fine." With the renewed spotlight on the Brat Pack and Hollywood's ongoing obsession with reunions and reboots, McCarthy hints at the possibility of revisiting St. Elmo's Fire."There's been talk about it — picking the characters up before we all die," he jokes. "We'll see if that actually happens or not, but they're talking about it." Brats is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+. This article and video are presented by Disney and Hulu. Best of GoldDerby 'The worst has already happened, so now I have everything to gain': Meagan Good on love, loss, and empowering women in 'Forever' 'The Better Sister': Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks on their 'fun partnership' and the 'satisfying' killer reveal The Making of 'Beast Games': Behind the scenes of Prime Video's record-breaking competition series Click here to read the full article.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
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.
New European
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
Could Tom Cruise's next mission be the White House?
Upping the ante as ever, Tom Cruise dives to the bottom of the ocean and hangs on for dear life to a mountain-skimming prop plane, in the film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this week. In between, he pegs it everywhere as if he'd never heard of Uber, or impatiently listens to eleven different characters delivering a round robin of exposition, a baffling flaw in the era of show-not-tell scriptwriting. 'What was I going to do? Retire? Go fishing?' says a character as they face (perhaps) – don't worry, no spoilers here – certain death in Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning. The question could just as easily be posed of the star and producer – 'a Tom Cruise Production' – of this final instalment of the colon-rich, sphincter-tightening franchise. The film hasn't quite got the machine-tooled efficiency that gave Bond and Bourne a quite literal run for their money, and suffers end-of-franchise nostalgia – the Return of the King syndrome if you will – trying to give each of the characters their due and getting all strangely mushy about each other. I've always found the Mission: Impossible films to be jarringly uninvolving on an emotional level while always enjoying the kinetic daredevilry of its action sequences. The emotional depth is the kind felt at a goodbye party for an employee who's only been with us a month. The one exception to this might be Tom himself. Let's be clear. I'm not going to miss Ethan Hunt. I mean, who is Ethan Hunt if not 'A Tom Cruise Production' in flesh? He certainly isn't a character. I doubt there'll be a hunt for the new Ethan Hunt, the way there is for a new James Bond. But I am going to miss Tom. I worry about Tom. Without Mission: Impossible, what is he going to do now? Go fishing? Surely, he's going to need to bungee jump off the Hoover Dam or go down the Niagara Falls in a barrel of a weekend, if only to wind down from a career that has made him the most action-oriented American movie star since Buster Keaton. He's the west's answer to Jackie Chan, working in the tradition of a genuine heart-throb doing his own stunts, like Jean-Paul Belmondo. And the weird thing is, Cruise's career has been a mirror image of what it should have been, with his biggest action role in the latter half. When most actors are 'too old for this shit,' it seemed like Tom was just getting started (Danny Glover was 41 when he said that line in Lethal Weapon). In his youth, his films tended to skew comedy or dramatic. Coming out of the Brat Pack via films such as Taps (co-starring Sean Penn) and The Outsiders (co-starring the entire 1980s), Cruise first hit it big with the one-two punch of All the Right Moves and Risky Business and morphed himself by sheer will and persistence into a good actor. A handy trick Cruise employed was to ally himself to elder co-stars as he took on the role of the upcoming and arrogant whippersnapper. In The Color of Money he was the cocky pool player, schooled by Paul Newman's Fast Eddie. In Rain Man, he was a car salesman yuppie and Dustin Hoffman's younger brother, who learns about autism and caring. In Cocktail, he was the acolyte to famed Australian Bryan Brown who would teach him to… make cocktails. 'When he pours, he reigns,' promised the best tagline ever. It was a sly move. Before you knew it, he was not just learning from screen legends – the end of The Color of Money gives Newman a clear advantage – he was besting them. 'You can't handle the truth!' rants a spittle-flecked Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men in 1992, but the end of the courtroom drama had a clearly triumphant Cruise handling it just fine. Along the way, he'd notched up some of the industry's finest directors. They included legends such as Francis Ford Coppola, Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Rob Reiner and Ridley Scott, though it was brother Tony Scott who had the biggest impact on the star's career with 1986's Top Gun, which gave both aviator shades and the naval flight academy a recruitment bump. Cruise's Maverick has no identity beyond a grin and a catchphrase. Maverick, like Ethan Hunt, is essence of Cruise, this time poured into a cockpit with nary a mentor in sight. He's an insider's outsider. He doesn't follow orders but accomplishes the mission, maverick in call sign only. Kelly McGillis had the thankless task of looking like she wanted to teach him something about aerodynamics. Having dominated the latter half of the eighties, Cruise convinced doubters about his acting chops with his performance as paraplegic Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, a heartfelt, angry side of Cruise that reminded audiences that away from sunny Reaganite power fantasies Cruise could deploy an unsuspected range. That's not to say that throughout Cruise's career there haven't been some dips and unfortunate role choices. The public's perception has not always been of Cruise as the international treasure who rappelled into the Covid crisis to single-handedly save cinema. There was Legend for instance, an early brain fart of a role that had a lank-haired Cruise play Jack in the Green, poncing around saving unicorns from a satanic Tim Curry. Sometimes, it was his private life that skewed the public's perception of him. His relationship with then marriage to Nicole Kidman on the woeful Days of Thunder led to Far and Away the worst film of his career (see what I did there?) His third marriage to Katie Holmes led to a daughter and the smush-neologism of TomKat, but the break-up was acrimonious. Over all of this was cast the strange light of his involvement with the Church of Scientology, a subject I've been careful to avoid lest I start getting followed by mysterious people; something which definitely wouldn't happen. Rumours abound over his attempts to convert Hollywood greats to L Ron Hubbard's religion as well as it having an involvement in the break up of two of his marriages. He had moments of out-of-control exuberance: he jumped up and down on Oprah's sofa and got in Matt Lauer's face about the terrors of psychiatry. The rumours about his sexuality led to a merciless ridiculing in an episode of South Park, something which must have been hard for a man who is always trying to be taken so seriously. Stanley Kubrick would exploit this tendency in Cruise as well as the many ambiguities of the Cruise persona in Eyes Wide Shut, emasculating his lead to a dithering bourgeois doctor being taunted with homophobic slurs on the streets of New York and gnawingly jealous of his wife's (Kidman) sexual fantasies. With his stardom assured and emboldened by his work with Kubrick, Cruise was in a position to move out of his comfort zone. Paul Thomas Anderson turned him into a sleazebag proto-Andrew Tate for Magnolia and Michael Mann made him a chalky-haired hitman with a rare villain role in Collateral. But ever the canny navigator of his own career, Cruise underwrote this risk taking with a popular franchise based on a 1960s TV show. Enter Mission: Impossible. It was, to say the least, an odd choice. The whole point of the original show was the anonymity of the cast. The characters were one dimensional agents who staged elaborate espionage jobs and heists. It had one star: the theme music by Lalo Schifrin. Brian de Palma's inaugural entry kept the faith of the original while promoting young Hunt (Cruise) above the mentor/adversary, played by Jon Voight. But each subsequent entry saw Cruise taking greater prominence and control. John Woo brought his 'gun fu' to the ludicrous fun of the first sequel, JJ Abrams put the train back on the tracks in his efficiently exciting follow up, and Brad Bird ushered in the first massive success of the series with Ghost Protocol. The arrival of screenwriter/director Christopher McQuarrie saw Cruise find a partner ready to loyally serve the star and establish full Cruise control. He would go on to direct all the remaining films in the franchise including the most commercially successful: Fallout. Final Reckoning brings together a whole mishmash of millennial apocalyptic hysteria. The adversary is called the Entity and comprises all our fears about AI, nuclear weapons, misinformation and the rise of populism into a pulsing blue graphic. 'It makes our allies, enemies and our enemies, aggressors,' someone explains. So, Trump 2.0 then? Cruise's mission (if he should choose to accept it) is to put the genie of technology back in the bottle and unite the world. Never has he been more messianic and throughout the film there is a religious fervour. A computer key is shaped as a cruciform, like something from a reliquary, and the Entity itself is referred to as the 'anti-God.' So what of Cruise himself? Having proven once more that the title was a lie, Cruise is the one we are assured who could be trusted with the total power that the Entity promises. Having saved the world numerous times on the big screen, could he be tempted to sort out the world's problem via political office? After President Reagan, Governor Schwarzenegger, Trump I & II, would Cruise fancy running – in his inimitable arms pumping style – for the White House? Given the popularising of so many marginal crackpot ideas, Scientology might not be the dealbreaker it once was. Think about it: President Tom Cruise. Perhaps unlikely, but not impossible. John Bleasdale is a writer, film journalist and novelist based in Italy
North Wales Live
17-05-2025
- North Wales Live
Pub grub in scenic village that's makes heading off the A55 worthwhile
Many years ago, the pretty village of Dwygyfylchi was a staging post for travellers criss crossing between Anglesey and north east Wales. That's one of the reasons why pubs like the Fairy Glen Hotel sprang up. Today it is just off the beaten track but it's definitely worth veering off the A55 Expressway to come here for a bite to eat, a drink of something cool and to savour the beautiful surroundings. I'd passed it many times but called in for a visit for the first time on one of this glorious Spring's sunny days last week. It's the kind of pub I love - packed with character, wooden beams and pictures on the walls dedicated to its rich, local history. A grainy print shows horses and carts bringing passengers down the nearby Sychnant Pass probably in the early 1900s. There is even a list of local accidents. No donated photo or picture is refused, apparently, meaning there isn't much available wall space left. There are also photos of former Hollywood luminaries Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren along with the Brat Pack. This was late on a Tuesday lunchtime and it was quiet. I picked a cool table indoors and checked the menu. It offers a range of intriguing choices - Luxury Fisherman's Pie (£18.45), Deep Fried Reformed Scampi (£18.45) and also a vegetarian Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni (also £18.45). But I wanted to see what a "homemade" dish was like so opted for the Homemade Chicken and Ham Pie. It came with chunky chips and a salad. The pie was filling with decent pieces of tender chicken and slightly salty ham. They were in a lovely creamy, herb sauce in the pie. The puff pastry topping was light and delicate. The desserts are traditional so I went for the Apple Crumble and vanilla ice cream. It was very good although on the slightly stodgy side. On this visit I had an orange cordial. But another time I might have had one of the lagers or a bitter. The Fairy Glen offers a good selection of lagers including San Miguel, and a Flintshire bitter of Holywell but only at weekends when it's busier. The facts Food: Varied and hearty Service: Friendly and quick Atmosphere: Traditional country pub with period features
