Though Rob Lowe might not be the guy to go to for sports news with his recent tweets about Peyton Manning retiring proving to be inaccurate, the forty-seven year old actor has been a hard-working actor since the early 1980s. But Lowe might have taken on the most difficult role of his career in the Lifetime movie Untouchable: The Drew Peterson Story, a movie about the true story of a man accused of killing both his third and fourth wife. Lowe explains to the Los Angeles Times what appealed to him about playing such an unlikable person who he doesn’t look similar to.
In order to look more like Peterson, Lowe had to undergo a body transformation sometimes taking up to six hours. He was given a fake mustache and grey hair, along with a heavier gut. Lowe admits that part of the attraction of the part was to go through such a transformation. He says, “That for me — the transformation — is what I always aspired to do. To be able to do characters on such wide edges of the spectrum. That is definitely the case right now.”
In addition, playing a real-life controversial figure also made the role intriguing to Lowe, especially since Peterson seems to have two sides. He explains, “For me, finding those places to make him fully dimensional was interesting. Here he is, this dark, threatening, potentially dangerous character who clearly had an ability to charm young, beautiful women.” To prepare for the role, Lowe found himself analyzing hours of footage of Peterson. Lowe points out that Peterson’s eccentric real-life personality might be hard for audiences to swallow, “The stuff he actually says you couldn’t make up. So much so that I worry that when people see it, they’ll think it’s over the top. It’s not. He said these things.”
Ultimately Lowe admits that it isn’t easy playing a man who is an accused wife-killer, but he does have to try and understand Peterson. He admits, “I don’t have to relate to it; I don’t have to like it; but I have to at least recognize his distinct worldview.”
