popular thinking

You could say that about a lot of the characters in ABC's Lost, that they're seeking redemption. But even more so for Dr. Jack, played by Matthew Fox.

On Lost, he became, reluctantly or not, the leader for the survivors of Oceanic 815. He has made tough choices trying to lead them out of tragedy and into recovery, into redemption. Sounds not all that different from his first starring turn on TV's Party of Five, where he was the eldest child of sudden orphans, struggling to lead them. Or from his first major feature film, this winter's We Are Marshall, where he played the real-life assistant football coach who struggled to help lead his team and his college back after a plane crash.

So I asked Fox if this pattern meant something more significant. I had the chance to meet him in a one-on-one interview during his winter break from filming Lost.

“I’m obviously attracted to those types of things, darker material and heavy material, but you know, my friends and the people that are close to me will always say there’s a real, goofy, light side to me, too. And when I got the opportunity to do SNL, I knew that I was going to have a ball. But it even surpassed that so much. I had the greatest week over there,” Fox told me. “It was the most fun I’d have had doing something as a performer. It was really incredible.”

But what about those darker-themed stories?

“I think that’s one of those things that you probably have the objectivity on it well enough to see parallels on those kinds of choices that I can’t,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t ever really know why I choose certain material. I wish I had a formula to figure that out. But I don’t. Sometimes I read things that I think are quite good, but I don’t connect to. And then some things just become inevitable in a way. You kind of connect to them in a way you don’t understand and then you lay awake at night, sweating it and freaking out over it and trying to find ways to not do it, to eliminate it. And then you finally kind of fall over the ledge of that inevitability and you just freefall into the truth of the fact that you have to do it. You know? No matter how scary or difficult it’s going to be, or what it’s going to put you through, you just finally hit that moment where you’re like, I really have no choice but to be involved in the telling of this story. So, yeah, I do find myself making choices that are difficult. But there’s also a lot of challenge in that. I think, yeah.”

It certainly doesn't come from some tragedy in his own life -- at least not from what he told me, saying he “couldn’t feel more blessed in my personal life,” from his wife and children to his brothers and parents. Fox did suggest, though, that growing up in a small Wyoming town probably has unconsciously shaped his acting choices.

“There’s a beautiful sadness to those kind of places, and I am very much attracted to that. I love that. That’s a huge defining part of who I am, is growing up where I grew up. There’s no question about that,” he told me. “But then, there’s that thing that I go for, and then there’s the fun I had really letting the goofball side of myself go on SNL.”

And that's when Fox decided that, if anything, his choices reflect a desire for redemption.

“Redemption is a massive part of the choices, I know that. And you can look at almost any story and they’re stories of redemption. The basic premise and the structure of storytelling has an innate, built-in element of redemption to it,” Fox said. “But I find myself really attracted to stories that are more focused on that element of a man redeeming himself. And that, that’s tied into all of our -- men, women, the human species -- need to attempt to redeem yourself through your life. To try to become the person you want to be, and oftentimes are falling short of. And so, yeah, I think that. But you look at the choices I’ve made…there’s definitely something in it there, yeah.”

Labels: celebrities, TV