The Outsider trailer gives Rob Lowe's tumultuous life the documentary treatment

At some point during Rob Lowe’s long and varied movie and TV career, it dawned on viewers that the former Brat Pack star is actually a pretty good actor. Whether it happened during one of Sam Seaborn’s impassioned speeches on The West Wing or Chris Traeger’s impossibly chipper interactions of Parks And Recreation , even those who’d seen the former child star as something of a 1980s-era punchline and scandal machine had to admit that there’s a real performer in there.

The trailer for Chris Smith’s Netflix documentary Rob Lowe: The Outsider attempts to reconcile those vastly different eras in the actor’s career, with Lowe himself offering up a sobering assessment. “I have a theory that you become trapped in the era in which you became famous,” Lowe states at one point, adding ruefully, “Unfortunately, I was 17 years old.” Over grainy VHS clips of the young Lowe partying on yachts, looking sullen alongside his Brat Pack costars, and canoodling with countless leading ladies (Gwynneth Paltrow pops in to insist she did not sleep with Lowe, who “slept with everyone”), the trailer seeks to put Lowe’s eventful, up-and-down career in the context of child stardom, too-early access to excess, and later questions like, “Is that all there is?” The trailer touches on the 1988 scandal where Lowe, who claims he was unaware, filmed himself sleeping with an underage girl, a lingering transgression viewers still have to square with both the present-day Lowe’s career and his Chris Trager-like self-improvement image. (Not to mention his flirtation with right-wing moviemaking .) With the talented Smith ( American Movie ) at the helm, Rob Lowe: The Outsider at least should provide some insight into a onetime teen idol’s slow transition from Hollywood joke to respected actor.

The film premieres on Netflix on November 24. Keep scrolling for more great stories.