Rob Lowe says being good looking makes life hard

Rob Lowe says good looking actors find it hard getting into the industry.

Step aside, all other minorities. The real people being discriminated against, says Rob Lowe, are the good looking ones.

The actor, who last played the effeminate plastic surgeon Dr Startz to Michael Douglas' Liberace in Behind The Candelabra (2013), told The New York Times magazine recently that being attractive made it "much harder" to get by in the entertainment industry.

"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," he said.

"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."

So far, so modest.

He went on to add that there exists "a historical bias that good-looking people are not funny," and said that he himself was a bit of a "theatre geek" at school. Albeit a hideously beautiful one.

"It took being famous to make me cool, which, by the way, I never forgot," he said.

Lowe, who recently ended his run on US show Parks and Recreation, is set to appear opposite the brilliantly named Rob Riggle and Rebecca Romijn in his own NBC comedy series.

He releases his memoir, Love Life, on 8 April 2014.

- Independent