Set for life after Lost

LOST producers have done series star Matthew Fox and his castmates an enormous favour.

Though every actor fears being trapped in a show that starts promisingly, but ends up slamming into a wall of banality, Lost promises to disappear from our screens before it has outstayed its welcome.

The show's creators, Damon Lindelof and JJ Abrams, say it will run for three more 16-episode seasons and end in 2010.

Fox is intensely proud of Lost, but he can be prickly in interviews. He initially gives the impression he'd rather be having a tooth pulled than answering questions about his immediate and long-term future.

"It's a hard show for you to report on, and it's a hard show for us to talk about," Fox says.

"It is a very plot- and spoiler-driven show, so maybe we should just all go home," Fox says.

Lightening up a little, Fox, who plays medico Jack Shephard, admits he has mixed emotions about the drama having an end point.

Fox says he'll miss living in Hawaii, the show's location base.

"My kids (daughter Kyle, 9, and son Byron, 5) are just so happy there," he says. "I feel it's a great place for them to be growing up. My wife (Margherita) loves it and I am happy there. But we know our time in Hawaii is limited to Lost's time in Hawaii."

Some feel Fox's character in the show is indispensable -- that without Jack Lost's foundations would crumble.

Fox says his dealings with the show's creators have taught him there's no guarantee he'll be there when the final credits roll.

Lost prides itself on being a show with more twists than a bag of pretzels and Fox will not be surprised if, at some stage, he scans the page of a script to discover Jack is killed off.

"There was a point before I was hired, before I met JJ and Damon, where they were going to kill Jack in the second act of the pilot," Fox says.

"You think you're watching this story through this guy (Jack) and they kill him in the second act. That's the kind of story-tellers these guys are. So the concept that Jack is immune to death is totally unfounded. We are dealing with writers who think very much outside of the box.

"And we have created a story and an island where life is in the balance at all times. Characters have the potential to die at any minute. I think that just at the point that everybody thinks (Jack) may be a solid, Jack will probably die!"

Fox has been trying to ensure he has a career beyond Lost and has been establishing himself as a film actor.

He has been shooting Speed Racer and has roles in Vantage Point and We Are Racer.

It was critical, he says, to gain his wife's blessing to keep working when many of his Lost castmates were enjoying holidays with their families.

"My wife and I talked about it a lot," he says. "We knew that me doing the movies would mean I was (at times) going to be away.

"Margherita is so supportive of the choices I made."

But he admits he was concerned he'd return to the set of Lost exhausted because he hadn't taken time for a break.

"I was worried about that . . . I worked six days a week straight in my hiatus to do the films. It was an insane schedule. I was tired and it did take an enormous amount of energy to do, but working on other characters and being on different sets really rejuvenated me. I charged back into Lost."

Source: Herald Sun