Why ‘Lost’ Star Matthew Fox Disappeared From Hollywood

Former Lost actor Matthew Fox is back, seven years after he last made a movie. The actor stars in the upcoming Peacock thriller Last Light, which co-stars Downton Abbey actress Joanne Froggatt. During a press conference last week, Fox explained why he stepped away from acting for so long and what brought him back.

Last Light is Fox’s first TV series since Lost ended in 2010, and his first acting project since he made the 2015 Western Bone Tomahawk. The series was produced by MGM International TV Productions and is set in a world where society is in chaos after oil supplies dried up. Fox stars as a petrochemical engineer, with Froggatt as his wife. It is based on a novel by Alex Scarrow and directed by Dennie Gordon, who worked with Fox on Party of Five.

“I kind of had a bucket list in my mind of things that I wanted to accomplish in the business, and after I did Bone Tomahawk in 2014 that had kind of completed the bucket list,” Fox told reporters at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, reports Variety. “I wanted to do a Western. It’s a very odd Western, but it’s a Western. And so that sort of completed the bucket list.”

Fox, 55, also felt like he had to “reengage” with his children, Kyle and Byron, whom he shares with his wife Margherita Ronchi, at the time he decided to step away. “I had been focused on work for some time, and [my wife] Margherita had been running the family so beautifully, but I felt like it was time to be home, and I really felt like I was retiring from the business, and working on other creative elements that are really personal to me – some music and writing,” Fox explained.

When the offer to star in Last Light and serve as an executive producer came in, he jumped at the chance though. He decided that his bucket list now included executive producing. “I’d never done that before. The opportunity to be involved in Last Light came along, and so I wanted to give it a shot. And it felt like the right time,” he said.

Fox was also attracted to the project because it gave him a chance to work with Gordon again. The project “was surprisingly rewarding. And I felt really good doing it, and with this incredible group of people, and the collaborative aspect of it, and how well we all bonded, how much we believed in the project. And it turned out to be a fantastic experience,” he said. Last Light does not have a release date yet.

Fox’s decision to leave Hollywood behind followed two years of controversy. In 2011, he was accused of assaulting a female bus driver in Cleveland, allegations he denied and were not charged with. There was also a civil lawsuit, which the driver later dropped. In 2012, Fox’s Lost co-star Dominic Monaghan alleged on Twitter that Fox “beats women.” Fox went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in October 2012 to address the allegations and called 2012 a “very tough year for me and my family.” He said it was “difficult to be accused of something you did not do.”