Rob Lowe Opens Up About Pressures of Playing JFK

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Rob Lowe plays President John F. Kennedy in National Geographic's television event Killing Kennedy premiering this November for the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, and he opened up to ET about the pressures of portraying his hero and how he rose to the occasion.

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"The pressure in playing JFK is that he belongs to all of us," said Lowe, who went on to explain that everyone has their own idea of who JFK was. "As an actor all I can do is play my version of him."

The two-hour Nat Geo original film -- adapted from Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard's book Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot -- also stars Ginnifer Goodwin as Jacqueline Kennedy, Jack Noseworthy as Bobby Kennedy, Will Rothhaar as Lee Harvey Oswald and Michelle Trachtenberg as Marina Oswald.

"I hope that the Kennedy family is supportive," said Trachtenberg. "We are not pushing any conspiracy theories ... We're just doing facts."

The film focuses on Kennedy's assassination and its impact on America, which Lowe suggests might be lost on younger Americans.

"There's two generations of people that didn't live it, so they don't feel it the way they should feel it," said Lowe. "Our movie and other things that will happen in November I think will go a long way to reintroducing what we lost when we lost him."