Coventry Evening Telegraph (April 2006)

I’d be lost without Jack; ARE you ready to find out what’s lurking in the depths of the hatch?

IT’S difficult not to feel jealous of Lost star Matthew Fox.

He grew up on a beautiful ranch, was a star football player and brilliant student at school and went to New York’s prestigious Ivy League University of Columbia.

He took up acting first as a hobby and then landed a lead role in US TV’s Party Five and found himself named by People Magazine as one of their 50 most beautiful people in the world.

The 39-year-old is also happily married with two young children (a girl and a boy, naturally) and they live in an idyllic home in Hawaii. Why Hawaii? Because that’s where Lost is filmed.

Lost has become one of the biggest TV phenomena of recent years, telling the story of a group of plane crash survivors on a remote - and extremely strange - tropical island.

Matthew plays the hero, Jack Shephard, who is attracted to mysterious survivor Kate, played by Evangeline Lilly.

The success of Lost has certainly changed Matthew’s life. “It was one of the few times in my career I’ve ever gone to meet somebody without reading a script,” he remembers. “It was top secret, and nobody was allowed to read it.

“So I went in just knowing about the show’s creator JJ Abrams, literally nothing else. I never go in that blind. Upon meeting me, I think he really saw me as Jack Shephard. I said ‘that’s great, but I don’t know who Jack Shephard is’.

“He sat me down and he gave me a script on the spot. I was trying to read it, but he kept running into the room every 20 minutes and asking me if I liked it. I said ‘I’m absolutely loving it but you’ve got to let me finish it’.

“And upon finishing it the hair was standing up on the back of my neck. I really was thrilled. It was so incredibly well-written. And the premise is something I’ve always been fascinated by. The show really has the potential to examine the nature of the human species - there are elements of Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies about it.

“Watching how different characters reveal the darker side of human nature or the more positive and optimistic version of our nature is fascinating stuff.”

The eagerly-awaited second series offers answers to some of the questions posed by the strange island, but also presents viewers with a whole new set of puzzles.

But it’s hard to imagine now that JJ Abrams originally planned to kill off the character of top surgeon Jack in the first episode.

Luckily for Matthew he changed his mind before filming began, otherwise his stay on Lost could have been a short-lived affair.

“He showed the script to his family and some trusted friends, as he always does, and all the feedback he got said ‘it’s absolutely great, but you simply cannot kill off Jack Shephard’.”

Matthew has thrown himself into the role with gusto and has his own ideas about how the Lost adventure should unwind.

“I would really love to see these guys get kind of island-worn,” smiles the 6ft 2in actor whose parents raised longhorn cattle and horses. “I’ve talked to everyone in the cast about us getting leaner as time goes on. I think that’s important to the reality of the thing we’re creating. It’ll be a subconscious thing that people won’t glaringly notice, but they’ll be aware of it and appreciate it.”

Jack’s complex relationship with Kate, a beautiful, feisty woman with an extremely dark secret, also takes on a new twist in series two.

Of all the challenging aspects of Matthew Fox’s career, having to pretend to be attracted to Lilly must be the toughest?

“Oh God yeah, it’s almost too much to bear. You have to try to do your job, but that’s the one thing I’ve found almost impossible,” he laughs. “She is absolutely beautiful, and obviously the Jack and Kate relationship is one that I like a lot.”

ISLAND SECRETS

THE remaining survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 continue the struggle to break free from the clutches of the deserted island in the new Channel 4 series of the multiple award-winning, action-packed adventure drama.

Jack’s mistrust of Locke grows as he continues to question his motives and his obsession in uncovering the secrets of the mysterious hatch.

The fate of Sawyer, Michael and Jin is revealed after their raft was blown out of the water by The Others and the cursed numbers 4, 8,15,16, 23 and 42, that turned lottery winner Hurley’s life upside down before the crash, continue to haunt the island as they begin to uncover their meaning.

Meanwhile, another survivor emerges from the jungle - Ana-Lucia - the mysterious woman Jack met at the Sydney airport bar before the flight.