Get me a fast ride out of paradise

Matthew Fox is best known for his role as Dr Jack Shepherd in the television series Lost. Like George Clooney, that other star who began life as a doctor in a television soap and went on to become an Alister, he is progressively making the transition from the small screen to the silver screen.

The film that Fox hopes will enable him to do this is Speed Racer, a live-action version of the 1960s Japanese cartoon. The film promises to be one of the summer’s most action-packed blockbusters, featuring a car that would put James Bond’s gadget-laden Aston Martin to shame. The Mach 5, a sports car cum submarine, boasts blades that are deployed from the front bumper to scythe away obstacles, a bulletproof cabin, a remote-controlled droid and a giant jack that enables it to jump short distances at speed.

Fox plays Racer X opposite Emile Hirsch, who plays Speed, and relished the chance to get behind the wheel. “I’ve been a car nut for as long as I can remember,” he says. “One of the first things I wanted to be as a boy was a race-car driver, and I look at my own little boy, who’s only seven, and he’s already into it too, so I jumped at this film.”

The only problem is that Fox didn’t get to spend too long at the wheel of the Mach 5: most of the action uses computer-generated imagery (CGI), meaning that much of the time Fox was kitted out in his black leather costume acting on his own in front of a green screen, upon which the CGI images would later be added.

“My character is wrapped in leather and in disguise; doing fight sequences in that was incredibly difficult and I got very dehydrated. It was tough but really rewarding. A lot was CGI but I still had to do my own stunts, and that meant six weeks of hard training.”

In real life he drives an Acura TSX, a saloon based on the Honda Accord. He claims it is sporty, but you get the feeling he has bought it more for its practicality (he has a wife and two children) than seat-of-the-pants driving credentials. Not that he wants anyone to think he isn’t a petrolhead: “I enjoy racing and have always loved to drive fast, and cars in general. I recently got a chance to ride a Porsche on the Willow Springs racetrack outside Los Angeles with a professional driver from the Porsche Le Mans team. It was an absolute blast.

“I’ve done a few projects where I’ve taken Sixties vintage cars and modernised them into hot rods. Not me personally, but conceptualising it and then having someone else do all the work. Right now I’m working on a 1950 Mercury Coupe, which is going to be really cool.”

Fox says he unfortunately couldn’t take advantage of Germany’s unrestricted autobahns while filming Speed Racer there: “I really wanted to drive like a lunatic,” he says. “But when I began looking into renting something, Warner Bros didn’t really want me going out and driving 150mph on the autobahn.” Should his most recent project catapult Fox into Hollywood’s Alist, it won’t be the first time he has managed to reinvent himself. One of three sons, he grew up on a Wyoming ranch where his father, a retired geologist who had worked for Getty Oil, raised longhorn cattle and horses, and grew barley for Coors beer.

After graduating with a degree in economics from Columbia University – whose alumni include Barack Obama and Theodore and Franklin D Roosevelt – he considered a career as a stockbroker on Wall Street. Today he describes the experience as being surrounded by “go-getting wannabe Gordon Gekkos”. So he left and took modelling work at first, then roles in television commercials, before landing a part in the TV series Party of Five, which ran for six years during the 1990s.

His big break was being cast as one of the leads in Lost. The series has gained cult status, not to mention a thousand websites all trying to make sense of the contorted plot. It has been running for so long that Fox and his family have moved to Hawaii, where it is shot. It sounds idyllic, but Fox says the novelty has long since worn off.

“I’ve been living in Hawaii for almost four years now, so it’s not really paradise any more, man. Throwing snowballs on a mountain top is now paradise. It’s been a good place for us, and for a while I was excited to get out of Los Angeles, but we won’t be staying after Lost is done.

“Being in Hawaii has also been beneficial in that I really don’t like the whole paparazzi thing in my daily life, or photographs of my kids and that type of thing. It does happen but it’s very rare. I think if I was living in Los Angeles it’d be more difficult for me. There’s not a lot of paparazzi who want to do the 2,500-mile trek into the south Pacific for a shot of me walking on the beach.

“Working on Speed Racer in Germany I was barely recognised at all. The Germans really don’t give a shit, man! They might notice you, but they’re gonna pretend like they don’t, which is cool. I like that.”

But even Germany may not be isolated enough for him. His brothers and their young children live in Oregon, and he says that he and his wife, Margherita Ronchi, an Italian model who was his college sweetheart, are discussing joining them. “We’ve been talking about moving to Oregon for a while, so whenever things get tough, I just keep Oregon in my sights. I enjoy fishing, hiking and skiing, and the mountains and fresh air and all these things are available pretty easily in Oregon without having to drive a long distance.

“I’m really excited to figure all that out, but it’s still a couple of years away, so I’m just enjoying life right now.”

My stuff...

On my CD player
Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Shotter’s Nation by Babyshambles. I know that guy [Pete Doherty] has had a rough go of it, but I’ll tell you what: it’s a killer record

On my DVD player
I just watched A Clockwork Orange. I had never seen it before. I’m going back and grabbing some movies I should have seen but haven’t

In my parking space
An Acura TSX, left. It’s a nice sporty little sedan

I will never throw away
My iPod. I don’t go anywhere without it. The first thing I do every morning is put on my music