While promoting his second memoir, Love Life, Rob Lowe lamented the hardships of being beautiful, saying that society has a certain bias against people deemed good-looking.

Rob Lowe Talks Bias Against Good-Looking People

Lowe’s newest memoir, a follow up to his successful 2011 publication, Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography, hit bookshelves April 8 and the actor has recently been making publicity rounds to promote Love Life. In an interview with The New York Times published Sunday, April 6, Lowe mentioned what he believes to be an “unbelievable bias” against good-looking people.

“There’s this unbelievable bias and prejudice against quote-unquote good-looking people, that they can’t be in pain or they can’t have rough lives or be deep or interesting. They can’t be any of the things that you long to play as an actor. I’m getting to play those parts now and loving it. When I was a teen idol, I was so goddamn pretty I wouldn’t have taken myself seriously,” Lowe said.

Lowe was speaking to the fact that he feels his looks limited the parts he was offered as an actor, something he reiterated when speaking about his popular role of Chris Traeger on Parks and Recreation, saying, “Again, there’s a historical bias that good-looking people are not funny.”

Lowe may be confident in his abilities and his looks, but he admits he sometimes worries he’s a narcissist. In fact, in his book he mentions that his Parks and Rec co-star Rashida Jones calls him a “benevolent narcissist.”

“I’ve had years of psychiatry, and I ask about every six months – it’s sort of like getting your oil checked – I ask, ‘I’m not an actual narcissist, am I?’ The learned men of psychiatry assure me that I meet none of the medical criteria,” Lowe said. “And the fact that we can even ponder the question immediately disqualifies me from being one.”

Aside from his looks, Lowe also spoke about his political beliefs, revealing that he doesn’t prescribe to one party or the other, he looks at candidates as individuals.

“My thing is personal freedoms, freedoms for the individual to love whom they want, do with what they want. In fact, I want the government out of almost everything,” Lowe stated.

Rob Lowe On 'Love Life'

After his interview in The New York Times was published, Lowe appeared on Good Morning America and made light of his comments, joking, “It’s a national tragedy. Statistics show that worldwide, a minimum of 20 or 30 people suffer from this. And, you know, if I can’t use my podium for good, then what’s the point of it, really?”

Of course Love Life is about much more than Lowe’s looks. In the book he details some early exploits in the Playboy mansion, the awkwardness of being cheated on with Warren Beatty and how he was almost cast as ‘McDreamy’ in Grey’s Anatomy.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong

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