Leading Man who got Lost

MATTHEW FOX is the archetype of the all-American leading man.

He has the looks (he is tall at 6ft 2’, dark with a hint of salt and pepper in his tightly cut hair and designer stubble, and undeniably handsome). He grew up poor on a ranch in Wyoming, went to an Ivy League school where he played college football, before turning to modelling and then acting.

It sounds like the American Dream, but there is a lot about Fox that doesn’t fit the Hollywood mould. For one, he has been married to his Italian wife, Margherita for over 20 years. He starts by telling me about a trip they both took to Ireland in the summer of 1996. He recalls with great clarity flying to Dublin, driving to Galway and visiting The Aran Islands, which he read about in National Geographic. “It was so isolated and beautiful,” he says in his slow American drawl.

Fox is also unusual in that, despite his people saying that personal questions are off limits, he seems happier talking about his family than the movie he is in London to promote.

He continues with the story. That same summer, he and his wife decided to try for a baby, but over dinner in Dingle they both thought maybe they should wait and “be selfish with each other” for one more year. As it turns out, his wife did get pregnant with the first of their two children that year.

Today, the Fox family live, not in starry LA, but in central Oregon. “It’s really beautiful and wide open. It reminds me a lot of where I grew up. It’s really important for me to be in wide open spaces, and just out of it.”

By ‘it’, Fox means the trappings that come with being on TV. “I really wrestle with the path that I’ve gone on,” he says seriously. “I’m not necessarily comfortable with the fame and the attention and the whoopla that can come along with this gig.”

He pauses for a long time and then brightens up. “But as far as the work itself, the collaborating with people, all of us working together with the single goal of telling a story that maybe can mean something to somebody who experiences it — that I take a lot of pleasure from”.

His latest film is cross-cultural WWII flick, Emperor, set in 1945 post-war Japan. Fox plays the real life role of General Bonner Fellers who is charged with investigating Japanese Emperor, Hirohito for war crimes. Fellers is an honourable military man charged with finding out the truth, while also trying to locate the Japanese girl he loved and lost before the war.

The other lead role, General MacArthur is played by Tommy Lee Jones, who Fox has plenty in common with. “We have similar backgrounds, we grew up on ranches and farms. We both went to Ivy League schools and played college football. We both love fly-fishing. Whenever we had downtime we had a lot to talk about. People think he’s Mr Grouchy, but Tommy’s a very sweet guy, and easy to get along with.”

The role of Fellers appealed to Fox, even though he originally thought his character was fictional. “I feel like I didn’t know much about that period in history but I read the script and was really moved by it.”

For Fox, roles like this are what make his job worthwhile, but being a Hollywood star was never the plan. He grew up in a loving, but poor family and had his eyes set on making big bucks on Wall Street. He studied economics at college, before being talked into doing some modelling and then acting parts followed. Does he ever wish things were different and he was an anonymous suit in New York City now? He laughs, “There are lots of times I think how nice it would be to do without the attention, but I’m not sure I would want to be a Wall Street banker.”

Lost, the mind-boggling supernatural desert island TV show that ran for six years, is probably what Fox is still best known for. He played the leading role of Jack Shephard in the award-winning and much discussed show — its finale on ABC drew in 13.5 million viewers in the US.

“It’s a two-pronged thing,” Fox says about Lost. “As an actor you always want an audience. You don’t want to be doing what you are doing in a vacuum and you want others to experience it and enjoy it. Anytime you are part of something that means something to people, that’s fantastic. No one was happier than me that Lost was a hit all over the world… it’s just that when some of that attention is turned on me…” he trails off, thinks for a moment and then turning his hands towards himself, says sincerely: “Nothing over here is that interesting.”

Despite shying away from the public eye, in the past Fox has attracted attention for the wrong reasons. In 2011, while filming the movie Alex Cross in Ohio, Fox was arrested for assaulting a female bus driver. He later appeared on a US talk show to say he has not, and never would, hit a woman. Fox says a man punched him, a fight broke out and a woman who got involved made up a story in order to extort money from him. The woman later dropped the suit and received no settlement. Fox was in the news again when he was convicted for driving under the influence in 2012. He held his hands up, completed four weeks of alcohol informational training, stated that he learned his lesson and will never drink and drive again.

At 47, Fox looks incredibly fit, his muscular arms covered in tattoos. “I have been getting tattooed since I was 20,” he explains. “They have always been meaningful to me. Getting it done is very intimate… it hurts a lot and so it feels sort of sacrificial.”

I ask how he feels about the attention he receives, particularly from women? Is it weird, embarrassing, awkward, or even nice?

He ummms for a long time before replying: “I just don’t think about it that much. It doesn’t feel real to me. When I walk on a talk show and the audience scream, and it’s the girls screaming, I feel like that’s an agreement we’ve made,” he says, giggling about it.

Fox may not think he’s interesting, or understand his appeal, but audiences do. Is it down to the characters he has played — the dreamy good guy Charlie in Party of Five, then Jack, a classic hero in Lost, and now a noble war officer trying to do the right thing, and get the girl in Emperor?

“I don’t know… I guess. Over time people see new sides of me… but I’m not any of them, he says, “I’m totally different than that.”

* Emperor starring Tommy Lee Jones & Matthew Fox is out Oct 4