Matthew Fox

Real World article
(written from a Production point of view)

Matthew Fox
Actor(s)	Matthew Fox at the "Clybourne Park" Press Night in February 2011
Character(s)	Jack Shephard
Date of Birth	July 14, 1966 (age 58)
Origin	Abington, Pennsylvania, USA
IMDB	IMDb profile

Matthew Fox portrayed Jack Shephard, the primary lead role of the series.

Background and personal life

Matthew Chandler Fox (born July 14, 1966) is an American actor and former model. His first major role was playing an older brother and patriarch Charlie Salinger on Party of Five in the 1990s, co-starring with both Scott Wolf and Neve Campbell. Matthew Fox was born in Abington, Pennsylvania but grew up in Crowheart, Wyoming where his parents raised longhorn cattle and horses and grew barley for Coors beer.

He attended Wind River High School in Pavillion, Wyoming and did post-graduate high school study at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts. Fox subsequently attended Columbia University, where he played football and majored in Economics with the intent to end up on Wall Street. Fox also studied acting for two years at The School for Film and Television in New York City.

Fox married Margherita Ronchi in 1992. They have two children, Kyle and Byron.

Career

Fox as he appeared in Haunted.

In college, his girlfriend's mother, a modeling agent, convinced him to try some modeling. This job subsequently led to several television commercials, leading Fox to pursue a career in acting. After attending The School for Film and Television in New York City, Fox began searching for roles. His first major part was a guest role on a 1992 episode of the television show Wings, where he played the part of Ty Warner. This led to roles in the show Freshman Dorm and in the film My Boyfriend's Back. Fox's big break came with a regular role on the show Party of Five, in which he played Charlie Salinger, the eldest of five orphans and the head of the family. The show proved to be a success, and it ran for six years, ending in 2000. After briefly appearing as the lead of the short-lived show Haunted, Fox was cast on the television show Lost as Jack Shephard.

Fox in Party of Five.

In between his time spent acting on the show, Fox was able to star in several films. The first of these, We Are Marshall, premiered in 2006, and was followed the next year by Smokin' Aces (in which Fox had a minor role), and then in 2008 by Vantage Point and Speed Racer, both of which featured major roles for Fox. Fox also appeared as the host in the December 2, 2006 episode of Saturday Night Live. In March 2009, Fox announced Lost would be his last television show.

On Lost

Fox on the Lost panel at Comic-Con 2008.

In 2004, Fox auditioned for the role of Sawyer. However, the producers thought that he would be a better fit as Jack, a role which had been reworked from the original draft of "Pilot, Part 1", in which Jack was to be killed, to become the principal male lead for the series. Fox successfully auditioned, and was cast as Jack.

For his role as Jack Shephard, Fox was nominated for a Golden Club, won the 2005 Satellite Award, and shared the 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. Fox has also claimed that he is the only actor out of the main cast to know how the show ends, stating that "I do know how the show's going to end, I know what the last images will be."

Filmography

Title	Medium	Character	Year(s)
World War Z	Movie	USAF Parajumper	2013
Emperor	Movie	General Bonner Fellers	2013
Alex Cross	Movie	Picasso	2013
Speed Racer	Movie	Racer X	2008
Vantage Point	Movie	Kent Taylor	2008
Smokin' Aces	Movie	Bill Security Super	2007
We Are Marshall	Movie	Red Dawson	2006
Lost	TV series	Jack Shephard	2004 - 2010
Haunted	TV series	Frank Taylor	2002
Behind the Mask	TV movie	James Jones	1999
Party of Five	TV series	Charlie Salinger	1994 - 2000
My Boyfriend's Back	Movie	Buck Van Patton	1993
Freshman Dorm	TV series	Danny Foley	1992
Wings	TV series	Ty Warner	1992

Awards

• 2005 - Satellite Awards - Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Television Drama Series (Lost)
• 2006 - Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films - Best Actor on Television (Lost)
• 2006 - Saturn Awards - Best Lead Actor in a Television Series (Lost)
• 2006 - Screen Actors Guild Award - Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast in a Drama Series (Lost)
• 2008 - Saturn Awards - Best Actor on Television (Lost)
• 2008 - Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films - Best Actor on Television (Lost)

Media appearances

Talk show

Fox has appeared as a talk show guest in the following:

• September 21, 2004 - Jimmy Kimmel Live! (S2 E141)
• November 16, 2004 - The Ellen DeGeneres Show (S2 E219)
• May 18, 2005 - Late Night with Conan O'Brien (S12 E2065)
• May 23, 2005 - Jimmy Kimmel Live! (S3 E242)
• September 20, 2005 - Jimmy Kimmel Live! (S3 E299)
• January 18, 2006 - The Ellen DeGeneres Show (S3 E433)
• February 21, 2006 - Late Show with David Letterman (S13 E2551)
• December 2, 2006 - Saturday Night Live (S32E07)
• December 15, 2006 - Late Show with David Letterman (S14 E2709)
• June 19, 2009 - Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (S16 E20)
• February 25, 2011 - The Graham Norton Show

Magazine

Fox has been featured as the main topic of the following magazine articles:

Source: [1]

Miscellaneous

• August 8, 2004; September 14, 2005; September 30, 2006: Sunset on the Beach (Season 1–3 premieres)
• 2004 - Comic Con 2004
• October 5, 2006 - TV.com video interview
• January 13, 2007: Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, "An Evening with Lost"
• 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, NV. (See The Final Episode (parody))

Trivia

• Has four tattoos.
• Is a Philadelphia Eagles fan.
• Is a good friend of Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong.
• Was the first main cast member on Lost to be told how the series would end.
• In We Are Marshall, William "Red" Dawson (Matthew Fox) stands in the gym watching head coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) and University President Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn) repeatedly calling each other Jack and Doc, the two names Jack is called the most on Lost.
• The second episode of his series Haunted bears some striking similarities to Lost themes. It revolves around a 4-piece English rock band, two of whom are brothers who have matching band rings, very much like Charlie. A reference to the term redshirt is made, and a character mentions that to get to a certain place, Matthew Fox's character needs to "follow the white rabbit".
• Has been an avid chess player since his college days and plays both correspondence and over-the-board.
• When Fox hosted Saturday Night Live (#611, December 2, 2006), he said in the sketch "Lost in an Elevator" "I've been married for 15 years".

References

Wikipedia has information related to:

Matthew Fox (actor)

External links

• Biography - at ABC Medianet
• Amazon-IMDB January 2006 article on Fox's reputed $250,000 above and beyond salary increases for the main cast
• [2] An article discussing the meaning of the 4 Chinese characters on Fox's forearm.
• YouTube - "Connecting Flight", a student film starring a much younger Fox and his wife Margherita.
• YouTube - Class Day 2007 Speech at Columbia University, his speech to the graduating class of 2007 on May 15, 2007.
  • Columbia University - Text of the above speech
• Matthew Fox interviews Non-English, but with large scans