Sports Illustrated (2006)

Q&A: Matthew Fox

Last week SI writer Richard Deitsch interviewed Matthew Fox for the magazine’s Q&A. The 40-year-old actor (Lost) plays former Marshall assistant football coach Red Dawson in We Are Marshall, which opens on Dec. 22. Here are additional excerpts from their conversation:

SI: Red Dawson was an assistant on the 1970 team, but he wasn’t with the team when its plane crashed, killing 75 people on board, because he was on a recruiting trip. You invited him to meet you in Hawaii before filming. Did he have reservations about flying?

Fox: I invited him because I was shooting Lost and there was no way I could go to Huntington, W. Va. [where the movie was filmed]. I anticipated him not wanting to come, and I obviously understood. He has not done very much flying for 35 years. I was asking a lot of him, and I was blown away when he decided to come.

SI: Did he know who you were?

Fox: He didn’t know who I was, and I loved that. I felt it was my responsibility to earn his trust. I think that’s what we did in Hawaii. We just spent four or five days together. He met my family. He had dinner with us. He hung out with my kids. He is a man who has not spoken much about this for 35 years and he’s had a hard time dealing with it. He had been carrying a lot inside. He’s really sort of iconic in that strong and silent way of dealing with intense emotion and grief. So I felt the most important thing was just to get know each other as guys and find the places that we had a lot in common. It turned out that we just had a lot in common. We were raised with similar priorities and ways of looking at life. We both have a real love for football and fishing and the outdoors. We just bonded and after about a day we both realized that we really liked each other.

SI: Have you asked him what he thought of the film?

Dawson: He called me right way. He said he was blown away. He’s very happy. Red being Red, it was hard for him to express what he thought, but I know he’s really happy about how it came out. And that meant everything to me.

SI: How did the town respond to the film being made?

Fox: On one hand, they people were like, ‘Wow, finally, our story is going to be told.’ On the other hand, they were fairly suspicious of a bunch of Hollywood people coming in to exploit this story, and totally mess it up.

SI: What did you know about Marshall and the story of the program before this film?

Fox: I didn’t know anything about 1970 and what had happened in Huntington. But I read the script and I thought it was beautiful. It was the kind of movie I am attracted to. I definitely connected to it in some way. The real turning point for me with the project was meeting [director] McG. We just talked for about an hour and a half about the project, all of the research he had done, and about Red Dawson. I said, ‘I’m in. I really want to do this.’
SI: Do you now find yourself paying attention to Marshall football?

Fox: Absolutely. I don’t know if it is just coincidence, but it seems they have had a lot of nationally televised games. And I know I’ll follow Marshall football for the rest of my life.

SI: You were a wide receiver in college. What current NFL receiver would remind us of Columbia’s Matt Fox?

Fox: Joe Jurevicius [laughs]. He’s the guy who can do the 17-yard dig route, get clobbered by the middle linebacker and always get up. I prided myself on getting up no matter how hard I took it. I didn’t have great speed, so I had to make up for it with heart and good hands.

SI: You played in the 16-13 victory over Princeton in 1988 that broke Columbia’s record 44-game losing streak. How sweet was that win?

Fox: I had a 40-yard touchdown that was called back. It was a rainy day and the sidelines were muddy, and I got chucked coming off the line and apparently went out-of-bounds. I thought I scored, but it was called back. But more than anything, I remember the immense relief and euphoria that win brought. We had gotten the crap knocked out of us for a long time. Every week we lost, we were news. Then the goal posts came down, and the campus partied for two days. It was a great day.

SI: You can switch places with one athlete for one day. Who are you?

Fox: Marvin Harrison. Catching balls from freaking Peyton Manning! Man, just to be in his shoes and to run routes with the way Manning knows the game and throws the ball. That would be amazing.

SI: So you’ve got a cool story about watching the World Cup final?

Fox: I was actually in Mexico shooting a movie called Vantage Point. My wife and kid had been in Italy for a month and they arrived a day before the final. My wife and I watched it together in a little bar in Mexico City called The Black Horse. It was awesome. I’ve been a huge fan of World Cup soccer since I met Margherita [his wife] and of course I support the Italians along with her.

SI: Any other fellow Italian supporters at the Black Horse?

Fox: Yeah. In fact, the bar was kind of split, half French and half Italian. It was an intense game to watch. The French and the Italians don’t really like each other and things almost got physical with Zidane’s headbutt. A lot of taunting and yelling. But it was all fairly good natured. I loved it. Margherita was in Italy for the earlier rounds. I would be watching the games in Mexico City and then I would call her right after the game. You could hear thousands of Italians signing the national anthem.

SI: What role does sports play in your day to day life?

Fox: I spend a lot of time watching ESPN. I love football, both college and pro. I’m pretty busy and I have a wife and two kids, but I try to catch at least one full game a week and I pay close attention to the scores. And I wager on football.

SI: What’s the greatest sporting event you have attended because of your celebrity?

Fox: The Kentucky Derby or Monday Night Football. I went to my first game last November when the Eagles played the Cowboys in Philadelphia. It was absolutely terrible as an Eagles fan. We were winning by 13 points with four minutes to go. I was sitting next to [Eagles owner] Jeffrey Lurie and his wife, and suddenly the thing just self-destructed. Donovan McNabb got hurt and the Eagles ended up losing. But the Kentucky Derby last year was pretty amazing. Giacomo won. It was the only Italian-named horse in the group and that’s how my wife usually picks horses. He was 50-1. That’s been a contention in our relationship.

SI: I read that you have futures bet in Vegas that the Bengals will win the Super Bowl. Still feeling good?

Fox: Oh, yeah. I usually do a futures bet on the Super Bowl and last year I had the Steelers. I’ve had a great year with futures bet. I had the Steelers to win the Super Bowl and the Italians to win the World Cup. The Bengals are not done.

SI: You are tight with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong. He’s a big Raiders fan, so let’s hope you’ve been getting on him.

Fox: Especially in a year like this, I’ll take a couple of Raiders shots at him (laughs). But only in a year when I have a fairly strong Eagles team. We’ve been friends for about nine years. We met when I was doing Party of Five. I’ve been a Green Day fan for awhile and they were fans of the show. Through their record label, they came to the set and we met. We both had young children at the same time and we started traveling and doing family vacations together. I’ve gone on tour with him, and he did an acting gig on a show I worked on. He’s a super guy, a really good family guy. He’s kept his head on straight and his priorities right. A good man.

SI: As an Eagle fan, here’s a forum to say anything you want about Terrell Owens?

Fox: I probably should lay off. I, like most Eagles fans, am not terribly fond the way that Terrell sort of made everything about himself. I think he is an incredibly talented receiver, but he should run track, where he can take individual glory rather than be part of what is ultimately the greatest team sport.

SI: Do cast members on Lost compete against each other athletically?

Fox: There are some very athletic people in the cast. Evangeline Lilly is a very athletic chick, but it’s not like people are getting together to play two-on-two basketball (laughs).

SI: Your castmates call you Foxy. Where should this nickname rank with say L.T. or T.O. or M.J.?

Fox: It’s always been my Dad’s nickname. When I was growing up, all my friends called him that. It’s not anything I promote but it just ends up coming my way. It’s all right, though. I like it.