The Breakup Advice Warren Beatty Gave Melissa Gilbert After Rob Lowe Cheated on Her

Little House on the Prairie star Melissa Gilbert thinks Rob Lowe cheated on her throughout much of their relationship. The first time she ever found proof, the couple briefly broke up. During that time, Gilbert’s friend Warren Beatty gave her some advice.

Rob Lowe and Melissa Gilbert broke up because he cheated on her with Nastassja Kinski

According to Gilbert’s memoir, Prairie Tale, Lowe cheated on her with Nastassja Kinski while they were filming The Hotel New Hampshire. Gilbert found out about the affair when she attempted to call Lowe at the hotel he was staying at while filming and the hotel operator told her that her boyfriend had just ordered a wake-up call “from Miss Kinski’s room.”

How Warren Beatty and Melissa Gilbert became friends

Gilbert and Beatty met in New York at the taping of the “Night of 100 Stars,” a benefit for the Actors Fund of America. After Beatty “locked onto” Gilbert for a bit, the Little House on the Prairie actor’s friend, Brooke Shields, pulled her aside and told her he was checking out her butt.

The next day, Beatty called Gilbert’s hotel room (where she was staying with her mother). He asked her to lunch, but Gilbert’s mom told her she had to decline. Before hanging up, Beatty asked Gilbert when her birthday was (when she’d be turning 18).

A couple of months later, Beatty called Gilbert, sang her “Happy Birthday,” “and we began a friendship that continues to this day.”

Warren Beatty’s advice to Melissa Gilbert about her breakup with Rob Lowe

Gilbert was having a hard time after confronting Lowe about Kinski. She gave Beatty a call and pleaded: “What the hell am I going to do?”

Beatty told Gilbert not to worry so much because Kinski “is such a silly girl.”

“What? This is not helpful,” replied Gilbert. “What am I going to do? You don’t understand. My whole world is completely falling apart and all you can tell me is she’s a silly girl.”

Beatty told Gilbert that “it will pass.” When she told her friend that Lowe said he loved Kinski, he said: “That, too, will pass.”

“You’re going to have to ride it out and wait till he comes home,” he said, according to Gilbert. “And he will come home.”

And if he never came home, both physically and emotionally, Beatty told Gilbert she had to move on.

“My friends who were my age and relationship morons like me had said pretty much the same thing,” wrote Gilbert. “But it seemed different coming from Warren.”

Lowe did come home and beg for Gilbert’s forgiveness. After 15 hours of “crying, screaming, talking, making love, carrying on, and laughing,” the Little House on the Prairie actor decided to forgive Lowe and they got back together.