Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise and Hugh Jackman are redefining the rules of aging
Former ‘Brat Pack’ members Lowe and Cruise, along with Aussie Hugh Jackman, are all in the news right now for various reasons, not least how they look and behave. With Gen X now firmly in middle age, the generation that refused to grow up appears to be rejecting getting old
By Ben Jhoty
MIDDLE AGE, YOU’D have to say, is aging rather well. If you wanted proof of that you need look no further than your Instagram feed, where you’ll see posts comparing what 50 or 60 looked like in 1980 compared to what it looks like now. For obvious reasons, former members of the ’80s show The Golden Girls are often used as a reference point for this type of content, which is frankly a little harsh on Betty White et al.
Further proof has been on display this week, most notably by former Brat Pack members Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise. Lowe, who is 61 and aging like a vampire, posted a “self-indulgent” shirtless gym selfie with his son, Johnny, 29. With his tousled chestnut hair, prominent pecs and barely a trace of the dreaded sarcopenia, Lowe could pass for 35. Many commenters even remarked that he looks better than son Johnny, which is a tough pill for any kid to swallow.
“The dad” followed by a brace of fire emojis and a heart, remarked one commenter, perhaps not even realising who Lowe is, was, or most importantly, continues to be.
On a recent appearance on The Today Show, Lowe attributed his aging secrets to three things. Firstly, serums, after host Al Roker exclaimed, “You’re 61, right? You use a lot of serums, don’t you?” Lowe responded, “I use everything! Are you kidding me?”
The former ’80s pin-up also pointed to his sobriety, which is going on 35 years. “Just that alone, you know, the cumulative alcohol – even if you don’t have a problem with it. I think that’s part of it.”
Finally, he called out his sleep patterns. “I sleep a lot. A LOT. People used to make fun of me about how much I slept. Now the science is turning around and people are, like, bragging about their sleep.” When asked just how much sleep he gets, Lowe proceeded to brag: “I could throw down 12 hours,” he said, before clarifying, “if I could. But, I’m a solid nine-and-a-half hours.” That’s what used to be called a ‘beauty sleep’.
Elsewhere in the news cycle this week was fellow Brat Pack member, Tom Cruise, who was trying to goose the box office for the final instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, while also gassing up going to the movies in general, in his seemingly self-appointed role as ‘the saviour of cinema’. He and Lowe worked together on the 1983 film The Outsiders, along with a host of other young hunks. Like Lowe, Cruise, 62, has been similarly lauded for his youthful looks and also sent the internet into a tizzy recently with shirtless shots of himself from the Final Reckoning set. Like Lowe, he sports an invincible mane of brown hair and a cherubic face.
While Cruise is perhaps not aging quite as well as Lowe, what distinguishes him, of course, is his willingness to put his body on the line in pursuit of ever more outrageous stunts – Final Reckoning reportedly contains a stunt that tops just about anything he’s done in these movies before. It probably doesn’t need to be said that 62-year-olds were not throwing themselves around like this back in the ’80s – even the game-for-anything Betty White.
Finally, we come to Hugh Jackman, who is slightly younger than the other two, at 56. He’s been in the news due to his increasingly bitter split with wife of almost three decades, Deborra-Lee Furness. In a statement released upon filing for divorce after two years of separation, Furness wrote of the “traumatic journey of betrayal” she felt at the hands of Jackman and the “profound wound” he inflicted. Jackman responded with an extreme act of social-media sass, with a reel showing off his skipping skills set to NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye, a track used in his film, Deadpool & Wolverine, along with the caption, “FINALLY”. I personally didn’t think Hollywood’s Mr Nice Guy had it in him.
Jackman, of course, shacked up with Sutton Foster, his former Broadway co-star, and somewhat ironically – given the premise of this article – star of the show Younger, in which her character, Liza Miller, is a 40-something publicist pretending to be 25.
Jackman and Furness are negotiating an increasingly common demographic trend called ‘grey divorce’ – though given the colour of the cuts on some of these actors, it should perhaps be termed ‘dye-job divorce’ or ‘resolutely nut-brown-hair’ divorce.
According to figures released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2023, more than one-quarter of the 56,244 divorces granted in 2021 involved couples who were married for 20 years or more, up from about one in five in the 1980s and 1990s.
Reasons behind the trend include the challenges of post-retirement, empty nest syndrome, infidelity, and financial issues. There is perhaps another factor, overlooked by demographers, which is more common among celebrities like Jackman and Foster, but one that likely filters down to the rest of us: how hot everyone in their 50s and 60s is these days.
Aging has become a battlefield, largely fought in the selfie-laden planes of social media. But social is merely the most visible expression of a society-wide obsession. The biohacking of Silicon Valley tech gurus and their increasingly more achievable quest for immortality is the logical extension of systemic vanity and a singular focus on maintaining youth. You can probably throw in the medical community’s determination to match ‘health span’ with lifespan, as well as increasing educational awareness of the importance of exercise, diet and sleep in maintaining wellbeing. Then there’s the pharmaceutical industry’s mass peddling of anti-aging products.
The downstream effects of all of this are manifold and somewhat jarring; if we’re living longer and healthier lives, traditional markers of aging will inevitably be delayed. Instead of occurring in the 30s and 40s as they once did, behaviours formerly associated with mid-life existential reckonings – affairs, divorce, divorce diets, divorce bodies, getting ripped, posting gym selfies, climbing Everest, entering triathlons and, sorry Tom, attempting plainly stupid and risky stunts – are pushed back to the 50s and 60s. Celebrities, with their wealth and access to the latest in anti-aging treatments, as well as the imperative they face to maintain their looks, are the avatars of the age-rejection movement, offering what should be cautionary tales that are instead widely interpreted as aspirational templates for us all.
Is it superficial? Sure. Is it a sign of a societal collapse? Probably not. Is there anything we can do about it? No. The desire to look youthful and feel young is age-old. It’s just that now, we’re increasingly able to achieve it.
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