Rob Lowe Says Young Tom Cruise Was 'Bloodless,' Charlie Sheen a 'Nerd'

Rob Lowe has very different memories of Charlie Sheen and Tom Cruise from when Lowe was 17 and auditioning for "The Outsiders."

Before a New York tryout, he shared a room at the Plaza with a "friendly" but "robotic" Cruise who had a "bloodless focus, an intensity that I've never encountered before," Lowe said in the May issue of Vanity Fair.

"Cruise is on the phone with his agent, Paula Wagner. 'Paula, they are making us share' . . . The rest of us are staggering around like happy goofs . . . 'Thank you very much,' [Cruise] says like a 50-year-old businessman."

Lowe also says, of hanging out with Charlie Sheen in the late '80s, that he was "a wonderful mix of nerd . . . and rebel . . . We competed to see who could play harder, then show up for work and still kick ass . . the verdict: Charlie by a nose."

Lowe recalls fondly his years of friendship with Sheen, with whom he plotted his rise to super-stardom in the Sheen family pool before the two young stars became household names.

Sheen has made headlines for his wild partying. He was fired from his hit CBS show, then alleged breach of contract and sued the show's producers.

Lowe also recalls his years with the "Brat Pack," a group of teen stars in 1980s movies made popular mostly for their success in films by John Hughes.

"The Brat Pack is timeless," he said. "We should all be so lucky in our lives to create things that we're still talking about 25 years later."

The May issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Thursday and across the nation April 5.

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