Rob Lowe. Photo / Supplied

Rob Lowe. Photo / Supplied

Rob Lowe announces his presence as he walks into the hotel bar by shouting across the room to order his coffee. "What I need is a double ESPRESSO!"

Lowe bellows with such force that the windows seem to rattle. "With some steamed milk ON THE SIDE!" He seems to crave attention, although we are the only people in the bar. The barman scuttles away obligingly. Lowe eases himself into a semicircular leather chair with a rubbery smile on his face. "IT'S MY ACTOR'S VOICE!" he yells at me before segueing seamlessly into an explanation of how he learned to project his voice during a recent stint in the London stage production of A Few Good Men.

At the age of 45, he is wearing a Springsteen-esque grey T-shirt patriotically emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes and faded blue jeans that are a shade too stonewashed. He has three chunky beaded bracelets that resemble something a student would pick up from a market stall.

Perhaps this is not entirely surprising for an actor who was catapulted into the limelight when barely out of his teenage years with roles such as Billy, the saxophone-playing rebel with big hair and a crucifix earring in 1985's St Elmo's Fire.

For many of us who grew up in the 1980s believing that leg warmers were the height of fashion, Rob Lowe epitomises the edgy-but-handsome leading man, the bad boy every girl wants to reform.

For much of his career, Lowe was defined by his looks, yet he has never quite grown into them. He lacks the grizzled charm, the lived-in creases of his near-contemporary Sean Penn. He is still excruciatingly pretty, but his features are so perfect that they appear slightly absurd. His early roles in films such as Francis Ford Coppola's coming-of-age classic The Outsiders (1983) and the 1984 comedy Oxford Blues made him into a pin-up. The next year, St Elmo's Fire cast Lowe as a shiftless frat boy and ladies' man alongside a new generation of stars including Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson.

Lowe became the 1980s poster boy, partying hard with his co-stars and dating the requisite beautiful women, including Nastassja Kinski and Princess Stephanie of Monaco. He also developed a drink problem and a rumoured sex addiction that led to rehab. "I wouldn't wish it [the attention] on anybody," he says now. "It's confusing when you're young and you don't really know your own identity." It all imploded in 1988.

While campaigning on behalf of Michael Dukakis at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta, Lowe picked up two female fans in a nightclub and took them back to his hotel, where he filmed their threesome. A year later the mother of one of the girls (who turned out to be 16 and therefore underage according to state law) pressed charges against Lowe. Would he make the same mistakes if he lived his life again, knowing what he knows now? "I would do everything the same." There is a silence. Why? "If you go back in time to try to change things, you could end up changing the future, and I like where I am in my life. I love my life, I'm really grateful for the things I have, and if I did something different it wouldn't turn out this way." The case was settled out of court, Lowe did community service and the video became one of the first commercially available sex tapes, distributed for £25 ($57) each by American porn baron Al Goldstein.