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 all of a sudden it came crashing down after Lost ended. What happened to to Matthew Fox after Party of Five and Lost?

Matthew Fox Appeared In Several Onscreen Projects After Lost

After the Lost finale in 2010, Fox lined up three different movie roles across a variety of genres. He appeared in the 2012 action-thriller Alex Cross, 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 ($34.6 million) nor Emperor ($14.9) did well at the box office compared to expectations, and Matthew 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. After those three films, Fox had a small part in post-apocalyptic horror film, Extinction, and starred in the horror-western Bone Tomahawk.

Matthew Fox Stopped Acting To Pursue Other Interests

Matthew Fox as Jack Shephard in Lost

Bone Tomahawk, which opened in 2015, is the last film in which Fox has ever appeared. 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, Matthew Fox discussed why he retired, and that 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 in creating music. All of these various desires and personal interests kept him out of any role from 2015 to 2022. During the years of 2008 to 2022, Fox did not act in any television series 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

last light - matthew fox and son

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 that 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, Matthew 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 serve as one of its executive producers eventually was too much of an opportunity for him to pass up, and Last Light debuted in September 2022. After that show, Matthew Fox played a role in C*A*U*G*H*T*, a 2023 Australian satire about four soldiers who are captured by freedom fighters that produce a hostage video that goes viral. While neither of these two shows from Fox's return have come 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.