Love Life by Rob Lowe Page B

the places I still hope to go. They are my inspiration.
    It would be great to live in a culture where a genius like George Lucas doesn’t have to inoculate himself against criticism of his making a huge profit selling Star Wars to Disney by announcing he is “giving most of it away” to charity. It’s not our business what he does with the rewards of his genius, whether it’s four dollars or four billion dollars. What matters is: He came from nowhere, no one handed him anything and by the power of his mind he built an empire that brought joy to millions. He has earned the right to answer to no one.
    I am an unabashed fan of earned, deserved success.
    Sure, when I read Jerry Maguire I thought, “I would kill in that role!” But to see my old pal Tom Cruise in the scene where he goes from being “the master of the living room” to the naked vulnerability of “you complete me” makes me want to weep, not out of envy, but because he is a man fulfilling his potential. When someone is blessed with “their moment” and crushes it, it’s deeply moving for me. Seeing Catherine Zeta-Jones in Chicago revealing herself as a world-class song-and-dance woman or discovering a new face like Christophe Waltz asking, “Are you harboring enemies of the state?” in Inglourious Basterds turns me back into that little boy who fell in love with the movies. And in today’s jaded, bottom-line-minded world, I’m grateful for it.
    One of my wife Sheryl’s big movies as a makeup artist was Glengarry Glen Ross , starring her client Al Pacino. I came east to visit her and sat one day in the shadows to watch. All the lions of the screen were there: Al, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey and Alan Arkin. But the scene to be filmed that day was one where their characters were all to be schooled by a young interloper from the head office, to be played by my friend Alec Baldwin. Now, Alec can carry his own water, and he had plenty of experience and success coming into this day, but I don’t care who you are, if you are doing a three-page monologue where it is incumbent on you to outshine a murderers’ row like that group, there are no guarantees.
    I chatted with Sheryl, had espresso with Al and then pulled up to an apple box in the shadows to watch Alec shoot the big scene.
    What I witnessed was one of the largest beat-downs an actor has ever delivered. Alec’s “always be closing” sequence in Glengarry Glen Ross would become iconic. The writing was breathtaking and the right actor was there at the right time; he had only to execute, and he did. I had hairs standing up on the back of my neck.
    Al and the greats seemed appropriately stunned, although no one overtly noted the ass-kicking Alec had just delivered. (Although I thought I noticed one of them doing a less-than-perfect job of covering his professional jealousy. And it shows in that actor’s performance in the scene.)
    The writing and the acting on that day continue to inspire me. My line of work, like most jobs I’m sure, can sometimes be demoralizing, maybe even a little boring. But whenever I’m feeling “over it,” that maybe I’ve been at this for too long and it’s all a little bloodless, I know what to do. I go to YouTube and type in “Alec Baldwin, always be closing speech.” And I’m fifteen again, in love with movies, with acting and feeling the full throttle of my abilities and passion to use them. I’m ready to walk through walls again.
    When I was approached by Ridley Scott’s company to play JFK in Killing Kennedy , one of the reasons I said yes was my hunch that playing one of my heroes would be a deep source of inspiration. And I was right. All of the weeks spent dissecting his famous voice, the endless hours watching obscure archival footage, hoping to find a clue to his character, a toehold to climb over the barrier of his almost impenetrable iconography and find the mortal man inside, was sheer bliss. It was humbling and exhilarating to be given