Summary

• After a promising start post-Lost, Matthew Fox's leading man appeal waned due to box office disappointments and legal troubles.
• Fox stopped acting in 2015 to focus on family, personal interests like writing and music, only returning in 2022 for Last Light.
• Last Light marks Fox's return to television after 14 years, where he also serves as an executive producer. His future in acting is still uncertain.

When Matthew Fox finished a six-year run of playing Jack Shephard on the cast of Lost, it looked like he was on track to stardom. The lead of ABC's hit mystery-box show Lost and a popular character in the late 1990s drama Party of Five, Fox seemed poised to keep his streak of successful projects going, but that is not what ended up happening in the end. Despite several small jobs in movies and television series, Fox eventually stopped acting and would not return for many years.

A combination of family interests, personal projects, legal troubles, and other external obstacles halted the trajectory of Fox's career just as he was coming off of a run on Lost. In the mid-2000s, Fox was nominated for a number of Golden Globe Awards, SAG awards, People's Choice awards, and Emmy Awards. His stock was rising as the 2010s approached, but Fox's career following Lost did not take off in the way that some people had thought it would.

Matthew Fox Appeared In Several Onscreen Projects After Lost

Fox Was Largely Cut From World War Z But Appeared In Other Notable Movies & Shows

After the Lost finale in 2010, Matthew Fox lined up three different movie roles across a variety of genres. He appeared in the 2012 action-thriller Alex Cross in a villainous role, he starred opposite Tommy Lee Jones in the historical drama Emperor about Japan and America during World War II, and he secured a role in the blockbuster zombie movie World War Z, starring Brad Pitt. Neither Alex Cross nor Emperor did well at the box office compared to expectations, and Fox's appeal as a leading man began to wane.

Originally slated to have a much larger role as a U.S. Air Force para-jumper based on the first script, Matthew Fox's role as in World War Z was significantly reduced, and he ended up appearing in only a couple of short scenes. It has been speculated that Fox's 2012 legal troubles, where he was accused of assaulting a bus driver, might have led to his role being diminished in that film, which did end up making over $540 million at the global box office (via Box Office Mojo).

After those three films, Fox had a small part in post-apocalyptic horror film, Extinction, and starred alongside Kurt Russell in the horror-western Bone Tomahawk. Fox's performance as the morally bankrupt yet surprisingly heroic gunslinger John Brooder earned Fox some of the best reviews of his post-Lost career. However, the role didn't lead to a career resurgence either.

Matthew Fox Stopped Acting To Pursue Other Interests

Bone Tomahawk Is Fox's Final Movie Role As Of 2024

Bone Tomahawk is the last film in which Fox has appeared as of 2024. In 2015, Matthew Fox left acting and would not return for more than seven years. When he was asked about his reasons for leaving the profession where he had had so much success, Fox explained that his retirement was because he had checked off the "bucket list" items he wanted to do as an actor. At the time, he said, his family had pressing needs, and he wanted to be able to spend more time with his wife, Margherita, and their two children.

Fox also wanted time to pursue some personal interests, particularly in writing and creating music. All of these various desires and personal interests kept him out of any role from 2015 to 2022 in movies or television despite the success of Party of Five and Lost. It would not be until he had the chance to check another item off his bucket list that he would return to the small screen in 2022.

Matthew Fox's Return To Acting Explained

Fox's Return To Television Was Smaller Scale Than Lost

In 2022, Matthew Fox starred in a Peacock limited series called Last Light. Last Light stars Matthew Fox, Joanne Froggatt, Alyth Ross, Taylor Fay, and Amber Rose Revah. In the series, Fox is a petro-chemist who faces a daunting challenge when it is discovered that the world's oil supply is on the brink of disappearing. The series was billed as an environmental thriller and marked the first time Fox appeared on a television show since 2008. In Last Light, Fox was also given the chance to play an executive producer role, something he had never done before.

The chance to lead a series and have a bigger role behind the scenes was enough to bring Fox back into the acting world and back to television. After that show, Fox played a role in C*A*U*G*H*T*, a 2023 Australian satire about four soldiers who are captured by freedom fighters who produce a hostage video that goes viral. While neither of these two shows from Fox's return came close to the heights of Party of Five or Lost, Last Light and C*A*U*G*H*T* have shown Fox was not done acting after so many years away.

Jack Was Originally Going To Die In The Lost Pilot

Michael Keaton Was Originally Cast

While Matthew Fox was established as a star in Party of Five, Lost was the show that brought his fame to another level. As the lead of the massive ensemble, Fox's Jack Shepherd was at the center of a series that inspired a ionate following among fans and remains a beloved series on streaming long after it ended. However, the original plans for the character of Jack would have meant a very different legacy for Fox as well as the series.

When initially conceived, Jack was supposed to die in the Lost pilot. The first episode of the series introduced the cast of characters who crash-land on this mysterious island, with Jack quickly taking the role of a pseudo-leader. The episode ends with Jack and some of the others finding the remains of the plane and the surviving co-pilot, only for the pilot to be killed by the Smoke Monster. The original version would have played out similarly, but it would have been Jack who was killed instead of the pilot.

The purpose of the original idea was to set up Jack as the lead of the show, only for him to die in the first episode in a shocking twist. The show further attempted to sell the impact of the moment by casting Michael Keaton as Jack. However, it was eventually decided that the audience would become too attached to Jack to see him killed off so quickly and they decided to make him the lead.

With this change, Keaton ed on the role, not interested in a full-time television job. Fox was cast in his place and Lost started a new phase of his career.