Press Release: MATTHEW FOX FROM ‘LOST’ TO CROSSING ALEX CROSS

MATTHEW FOX  is best known for his role as Dr. Jack Shephard in J.J. Abrams award-winning smash-hit series “Lost.” For this role, he jointly won the 2005 SAG Ensemble Award, as well as being nominated for the Golden Globe and Emmy for Outstanding Leading Man in a Drama Series.  His other television work includes the popular Golden Globe award-winning series “Party of Five.” He recently made his theater debut as ‘Bobby’ in Neil Labute’sIn a Forest, Dark & Deep, for which he received rave reviews. For film, his credits include Speed Racer, Vantage Point, Smokin’ Aces, We are Marshall and the forthcoming movies Billy Smoke and World War Z starring Brad Pitt.  In unstoppable action, and unforeseeable twists, ‘Alex Cross’, Matthew Fox plays the baddie role and arch adversary of private investigator Alex Cross played by Tyler Perry.

When it came to casting Cross’ adversary, Cohen went against conventional wisdom which would have led him to who would make the best villain. Cohen’s take on it was that it should be somebody who could have played the hero, thus accentuating the ambiguity of the character. “I met Matthew Fox for another movie and while it didn’t happen for us, I came away with the impression that he was intense guy and I remembered him.

“I thought if he could somehow wrap his mind around a villain of this proportion that he would be amazing and I really think he rose to the occasion of playing it,” says Cohen. To elevate the movie to another level, Cohen believed that it was essential Fox transform himself into something neither an audience nor the actor himself were familiar with.  “Matt put himself physically and emotionally on to a whole different level,” says Cohen. “This is a villain unlike anything anyone has seen.”  Fox lost nearly 35 lbs. for the role creating a visage that has him looking gaunt, nearly skeletal yet leaving behind only sinew and muscle on his 6’2” frame.

“Rob is just a very, very cool director with amazing taste,” says Fox. “He told me and I agreed—months before we started filming—that playing this part was going to require a big commitment physically. I felt I had to lose a lot of weight and get shredded down so that on the outside Picasso looked like someone who would have these disturbing ideas.”

In a way, Patterson and then the filmmakers have constructed Cross as the most American of icons: a lone sheriff in the old west who enforces the law and looks for justice where he can find it. 

“He’s a civilized man who, as the movie goes on, loses his civilization one layer at a time until he’s down in the depths with Picasso,” notes Cohen.  By contrast Picasso’s twisted sense of logic has him inflicting pain his victims or even himself, as he believes this is the only time that a person can be totally free. “He captures the moment with agonizing Cubist-like sketches because the character becomes more and more obsessed with the actual moment of death,” says Fox of his role. “In his mind, he’s giving his victims a moment of truly being alive before they die.  “He’s very much of an existentialist and the notion of shattering people’s constructs of right and wrong and the way the world should work, but he’s essentially chaos personified.”

Perry recalls his one and only non-acting encounter with Fox: “We met at the production office and he says, ‘I’m Matthew.’ I say, ‘I’m Tyler and this will be the only time we’ll be talking until we’re done.’ And he says, ‘yep, you’re right,’ and we went in separate directions.”

“ALEX CROSS” is released and distributed by Solar Entertainment Corporation.

Showing on October 17, 2012

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