Matthew Fox

Emmanuel Itier: Joel [Silver] just told us you had caught the red eye because you were shooting Lost till late last night. How are you feeling?

Matthew Fox: It´s a tough. Good problems to have, I suppose. It´s a lot right now. I was shooting on Lost until eight hours ago. I was on the north shore of Oahu shooting a scene at night eight hours ago.

EI: How are you feeling now?

MF: I´m fried. But it’s good. I´m happy to be here. This is… I can´t even really begin to describe how excited I am to be a part of this. I told everybody I´ll bend over backwards. I´ll do everything I possibly can to support it, as much as I can. I originally wasn´t going to be shooting Lost this time of year. Originally, I would have had all this time to put towards touring the movie all over the world, but the strike made it that we scrambled to get all these episodes done this time, so then everything had to be done at the same time. I was looking at my schedule on Lost and what I´m doing to support Speed Racer, and I´m working for the next 26 days in a row on one of those projects and traveling in between, so [Laughs] its going to be rough, but it´s also important to these projects.

EI: Have you seen the movie yet?

MF: No, I haven´t. I´m going to see it tonight. I can´t wait. There was a screening on Wednesday that I would have loved to have been at, but I was shooting on Lost, and so my wife and I are going to see it tonight. I did get so many incredible calls on Wednesday after that screening. I got calls from a lot of people that I work with, and Emile and Kick and everybody was calling me because it was really the first time that anybody had seen the movie in its finished form, and they were really flippin’ out & excited. We´ve all been so excited to be a part of it from the very beginning and so it’s been about a year really since we met each other, and we´re sharing our excitement to be a part of it. Going through the shooting process together in Berlin for three months was just amazing, and then to finally be here and to hear people’s responses from those that have seen the movie is really great.

EI: I heard that wearing that skin-tight leather suit was physically challenging.

MF: Yeah, it was. It was tough. Larry and Andy [Wachowski--directors] warned me from the very first meeting that I had with them that it was going to be tricky, both because of Racer X´s situation specifically with the suit, and as an actor not having your eyes to work with, and also just the physical elements of being in this suit and some of the fight sequences, and all the green screen stuff and the technology that they´re using in the movie, and what that requires you as an actor to do at times, like when you are doing a scene and other actors are removed from the scene, and you are doing the scene with them and they’re not there.

EI: Did you have to do a lot of training?

MF: Yeah, I worked really hard. I wanted to make sure that I did all the stunts because I knew that was important to Larry and Andy as well, because they could shoot it in a different way when I´m doing it all. Whenever an actor has to be doubled in an intense visual shot and you just pop in, it’s not nearly as effective, so I worked really hard. I trained with the stunt guys and did all the choreography for six to seven weeks before we got into shooting any of that stuff, so I was really prepared. I did all the stunts in the movie, which I´m really proud of. It was a fun part of the movie for me. I mean, I love that kind of thing and the challenge. The one thing I always said to them was, “I want to do every single thing, as long as you guys think it looks great.” And they were like, “Well, trust us. We´ll tell you if it doesn´t look good,” [Laughs], so it was good.

EI: Why did you really want to do this film? Was it for your kids? You weren´t a fan of the cartoon, were you?

MF: No, I didn´t really know the cartoon as a kid, but I certainly… as soon as I had my meeting with the Wachowskis, I punched it up on the Internet, and as soon as I saw the imagery for it, I knew that I´d had exposure to the imagery. I recognized it. I mean, it was a combination of a bunch of different things. The Wachowskis were the first thing. I just think that they are amazing filmmakers and they are always doing things in an innovative new way, and that´s always exciting to me. I admire that and respect it, and want to be a part of it. The fact that it was a family movie was really important to me. I haven´t done anything that my kids can really see. Most of it’s been really heavy, so this would be my first opportunity to do a family picture. I´m also really into the whole anime–that world and combining the live action with that and all the technology that was going to go into creating that visual space and have it be in the hands of Larry & Andy Wachowski, I just was so excited. It was really the only thing I wanted to do. I mean, I was looking at a lot of things this time last year, and the minute I met with them, the minute I read the script, the minute I got exposed to who Racer X was, I really also felt like I am really the guy that should do this, which is exciting when you feel that strongly about something. It became, like, the only thing. I pretty much just said, “If I don´t get this role, I´m not going to work this summer.” I waited a long time to hear if I got the role, and it was a really exciting moment when I got that call.

EI: Do you look for roles that aren´t like the hero you play on Lost?

MF: You know, I don´t really spend a lot of time thinking about whether the person´s heroic. I love the mystery around Racer X. Obviously, we find out that he is, in fact, Rex, but there is a mystery.

EI: Don´t you think he should have told Speed?

MF: I think he probably should have, but I understand his reasons for not.

EI: Maybe that´s for the Speed Racer sequel…

MF: It is really a set up for Racer X, and I really feel like the family is sort of the solar system, and his has sort of become this idea and he´s fighting for ideas, and he´s sort of a satellite that is orbiting it from a very, very far distance and he´s lost any sense of who he once was, and he´s so committed to an idea and to this thing that he´s created around him. It’s really Speed entering into his world and Speed being at risk in that world that starts to awaken that thing in him that he feels overly ultra-protective over. So yeah, I think they´d be an amazing arc to play in that, if we did happen to do more. As far as what I did in Vantage Point, that guy is clearly not a good guy, but again, I don´t really think consciously, “Do I want to look for someone that´s heroic next, or do I want to look for somebody that´s villainess next, or ambiguous next?” It´s really just… mainly it´s about the project itself and what I´m asked to do in it. I really like to approach it with I want to serve this story in the best possible way that I can and the way that I´m asked to by the people that are directing and creating, and I´m really attracted to the projects in their entirety.

EI: Would you consider doing a romantic comedy role?

MF: I can. I actually was talking to somebody about this the other day. Yeah, I can. They pitched me one that was really the only version of that that I want to do. I´m not really interested in the romantic comedy genre for me. A lot of the ones that are made… it´s really a tired genre. It’s gonna require a twist on that and a different take on it.

EI: Forgetting Sarah Marshall as opposed to Made of Honor?

MF: Those are not movies I haven’t seen so I can´t comment on those.

EI: Judd Appatow – that kind of comedy – Knocked Up

MF: I´m not really a huge fan of that. I love the idea of that kind of comedy–that kind of relationship, but in a really real story, something that´s happening. A narrative that drives it and that exists within the context of that. It´s not just about boy meets girl, boy looses girl, that whole thing…

EI: Do you feel attractive dressed in that leather suit as Racer X?

MF: [Laughs] Yeah, it´s pretty sexy. [Laughs] I loved it. Wardrobe is always a really important part, for me anyway, about character and trying to find your way into something. The wardrobe and that suit for Racer X was the most amazing thing, when I would put it on, on many levels because the minute the mask drops over your face, people change around you. It´s amazing because they can´t see your eyes and you can really manipulate that. You can mess with them in a big way and you can intimidate. I really messed around with that a lot and experimented with it. The minute I would drop into that, it really felt like X and that helped me in many, many ways to try and find how this guy has lost himself in that. I think my wife thinks it´s very sexy! People have been asking me if she´s been asking me to dress up in it on the weekends. [Laughs]

EI: Has she? Do you still have it?

MF: No, I don´t have it. That would be really funny, wouldn´t it? If I was wearing that around my house on the weekends, it would be really funny.

EI: You are often on these “sexiest men alive” lists. How does it feel when you find out?

MF: I´m going to be 100 percent honest with you. It feels like that is happening to someone else. So much of this stuff feels like it´s happening to someone else. I just go to work and doing the thing I love to do.

EI: Do you think it’s good being in Hawaii doing Lost, removed from all the craziness that goes on?

MF: Absolutely. I think if I was shooting the show in LA, I think it would be a lot harder. I´ve always sort of felt like, if I ever reached a point where I had paparazzi following me around or sort of posted outside my house, it would be time for me to leave. I´m trying to do the thing that I love to do and be a part of it, and provide for my family and do it in a way which is not jumping into their lives, and I think we are doing a pretty good job right now. Every now and then, something happens where my kids are photographed, which is just weird and upsetting to me, especially if I´m not there.

EI: Will you keep doing Lost? What happens when you just decide to do films and you are back in LA?

MF: I won´t be back in LA. After Hawaii, we are going to be moving onto a different place. We still have our house in Los Angeles, but we will eventually sell it. I don´t have anything against LA. It´s got a lot of great things to offer. We just also felt like we kind of wanted to be out of there by the time our daughter gets to high school, and she´s 11 so we are not very far away.

EI: How do you find the Wachowski brothers?

MF: I can´t say enough about both working with them and their work. One of the things I noticed when I turned up to the set in Berlin was just how incredibly calm and relaxed things were. They have been working with most of the people on the crew for a lot of years, all the way through The Matrix trilogy, and so these are people that have become really good friends and have moved up through the different levels of crewing together, and so it was just so relaxed and organized and calm. Part of that is also that it´s a big movie and we had a lot of time, and we weren´t rushing and they were doing a few shots a day. So the working environment, the set itself, was just absolutely amazing. Looking around and seeing people in the costumes and the colors and what this world was sort of going to look like – it was amazing. It was kind of like being part of a circus group or something. [Laughs] It was amazing. And then the way that they work, it’s just… I don´t know. I really don´t know how to describe it. It was a fantastic experience. They are amazing people, and the way that they deal with actors and set shots is just really fun and creative and good. And what the movie looks like, I think, is just astounding.

EI: Do you have a theory about Lost?

MF: I do, but I don´t really talk about it. My theory is defiantly colored by things that I do know. I know a bit, so my theory is not just…

EI: Are you told everything?

MF: Not everything. There is knowing how you get from point A to point B, and then there´s knowing all the exact details of how you get there. I don´t know everything, but I know a little bit.

EI: How difficult is it to keep a secret? So many people ask what is going on…

MF: It’s fun. Having a secret is fun.

EI: Do you see yourself working on Lost for a much longer?

MF: Unless Jack Shepard dies, which is possible”