Dominic Monaghan: 'I'd Go Back To 'Lost' In a Heartbeat'

Not many actors could go from playing a sing-songy hobbit in the fantastical "Lord of the Rings" trilogy to playing a sing-songy heroin addict in the fantastic "Lost," but Dominic Monaghan has never been comfortable with being boxed in.



For his next act, the 32-year-old is starring in the low-budget/high-concept 18th century-set thriller "I Sell The Dead," premiering tomorrow at Slamdance. In the film, Dominic plays Arthur Blake, a graverobber who spent years chasing creatures that refused to accept their place amongst the dead.

The hilarious, scary, stunning -- and in Dom's own words, "tickling" -- film is just the latest project for the actor who will soon be starring in "Wolverine" and promises that Charlie will be retuning to "Lost" if he has his way!

PopWrap: What first attracted you to "I Sell The Dead?"
Dominic Monaghan: I get involved with projects based on three parameters -- the script, the actors involved and the director. Now I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I read quite a lot of scripts and I felt that this was one of the strongest I've read, in terms of voice, in ages.

PW: The dark humor of it?
Dominic: You don't get to read many scripts with the kind of Celtic black humor that Glenn [McQuaid] had written into it. It has a very British feel to it, in the sense that when bad things happen people tend to laugh at them and be sarcastic and have fun with it. I think that's quite unique.

PW: I was amazed, based on the European look of the finished film, that you filmed in New York.
Dominic: We did a lot of work in New Jersey, too, over Christmas. Bitterly cold. One of the coldest shoots I've ever done. It was pretty grim to be honest, but it all worked to be honest because we're supposed to be poor, unable to afford good clothes and we don't have enough food to eat and we can't light a fire.


PW: It was like mother nature made you a method actor.
Dominic: Exactly. I think they made the film, which cost less than $1 million, look like a $2 or $3 million film. I was very impressed, but I don't get involved with films based on their budgets -- if it has a fantastic script and $50,000, we'll find a way to make it work. I had so much fun on this shoot, shivering in a little dressing room with Larry Fessenden and taking little nips of Jameson's whiskey from a hip flask to keep us warm at night. That was the charming part of the film, and I wouldn't have changed it for anything.

PW: You went straight from filming your last episode of "Lost" to shooting this film, that must have been quite a culture shock.
Dominic: It was quite cathartic for me, too, because when I let go of a character who was sympathetic and endearing as Charlie was, I grieved that passing. So it was nice to immediately jump into work and not have time to feel too sentimental about it.

PW: Plus, your character Arthur couldn't be more different from Charlie
Dominic: Yes, Arthur is quite proactive in his actions, and quite a strong character -- obviously not physically, but he stands up for himself. And it was nice to literally put on a new costume.


PW: Glenn not only wanted you for this role, but he postponed shooting for two weeks until you became available; that's got to feel quite nice.
Dominic: It's a place I've been trying to get to in my career since I started. If a director is holding up production because of the value of your cooperation, it just makes you work harder and harder. It's hugely complimentary.

PW: Did playing a graverobber bring to mind any of the terrible jobs you had prior to acting?
Dominic: When I was at college, I worked in a department store called Brit Home Stores, which is a pretty lackluster department store, selling clothes for middle-aged women. My job was to walk the floor and find anything that was damaged, take it to the store room and log it. Quite a lot of menial labor and I was treated in that regard, so that wasn't the greatest job I ever had. But I've been quite lucky with jobs and I try to approach any job with as much positivity as possible because then you get a positive thing out of a negative situation.

PW: Since I'm sure you can't get out of any interview without the subject of "Lost" coming up, I won't mess with tradition -- any chance Charlie will pop up in the final two seasons?
Dominic: The way I answer that question now is to say that unfortunately it's not up to me, it's up to Damon [Lindeloff]. I've been such a fan of Charlie -- the way he entered the show, the way he exited the show, the way he came back in season 4. They've treated him with a great amount of respect and tenderness. If it was up to me, I would revisit that character a dozen times if they gave him the same sensitivity they've given over the years. Obviously it's down to the writers, but I would go back in a heartbeat.



PW: Are you just as curious as the fans as to where the show is headed?
Dominic: I am. I've known Damon long enough now to understand how intelligent he is as a writer and how respectful he is of the project he's crafted, so I'm just excited to see what's going on in his brain. I don't have any doubts he'll finish it off with a huge shebang. But I'm like everyone else, a huge fan of the show and I want to see who's going to survive and what the ultimate cliffhanger is going to be.


PW: You are also a part of the upcoming "Wolverine" movie; how did that come about?
Dominic: One of my favorite films of the past 5 years is "The Fountain" -- it's just a work of a brilliant mind. So I've managed to sit down with [director] Darren Aronofsky over the years and tell him how much I enjoyed the project. I've done the same with Rachel Weisz. Hugh Jackman was the one person missing from that equation. So, I'd become friends with a guy at Fox who happened to call me one Thursday saying there was a part for me in the "Wolverine" movie and to call him on Friday after I'd read the script. So I called him Friday morning saying I loved the part and he called me back at 1 p.m. asking if I could be on a plane at 4 p.m.

PW: Just like that!
Dominic: Yep. I flew to Sydney, was there for about nine days of filming. I'm actually going back to do another 10 days in Vancouver at the end of January. It's a very exciting project. I'm a big fan of Hugh and I think the film will be a great thing to sit back in the cinema and strap on your seat belt and watch this huge beast of a movie explode.

PW: Are the 10 days reshoots or adding in new scenes?
Dominic: We're doing a bit of both, more than anything else, it's an additional scene which I would get shot in the head if I told you anything about. But my character features in a huge set piece with Hugh and Liev [Schreiber]. I think the best thing I can tell you is that it's a flashback scene.

PW: Between reshoots and going to Slamdance, it sounds like 2009 is going to be quite busy for you.
Dominic: I've got a hectic schedule, but I wouldn't have my life any other way. I'm really excited to see the audiences reaction to "I Sell The Dead," and to spend some time with the boys again.

PW: Will tomorrow's premiere be the first time you've seen the film with an audience?
Dominic: It will. My friend and I watched it the other day and my mom and dad have seen it. I think the best reaction I've heard is that people are tickled by it. It's a very cheeky film with endearing characters and it has a really unique voice that you haven't heard before.

Source: Popwrap

LOST - HOLLOWAY SLOWED DOWN AFTER TEENAGE CAR CRASH

LOST bad boy JOSH HOLLOWAY won't be joining his castmates caught speeding in Hawaii - he drives too slow.
Former show regulars Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros and longtime star Daniel Dae Kim have all been charged with speeding offences on the island, but a bad car crash in his teens has left Holloway driving like an old lady.
He explains, "When I was 17 I fell asleep at the wheel one morning. The car was destroyed going end over end, and all I got was a cut on the back of my neck from hitting the roof multiple times.
"Since then I've slowed down a lot, so people cut me off because I'm kind of a cruiser."

Source: contactmusic

Jorge Garcia Interview

Not much, predictably, has been revealed about the fifth (and penultimate) season of the cult ABC drama Lost, but one thing is certain: Jorge Garcia will still be amusing audiences as the laid-back Hugo “Hurley” Reyes. The 35-year-old actor, whose demeanor matches his character’s, has provided much of the notoriously convoluted series’s humor as a man who has been plagued by bad luck ever since winning $114 million in the lottery. We recently spoke to Garcia as he shopped for bread and eggs in Hawaii, where the show is filmed.

Time Out New York: Dude.
Jorge Garcia: [Laughs] Yeah.

TONY: Is Hurley required to say that at least ten times per episode?
Jorge Garcia: Oh yeah. Anytime I have a line, they need to put dude somewhere.

TONY: Did you use that word a lot before you took the role?
Jorge Garcia: I did say “dude” before but not as much as Hurley does. At first I was trying to say “dude” less than I normally do, just to keep some separation. But I really don’t care anymore. Now if it’s an appropriate moment, you know, I’ll just let the dude fly.

TONY: So, how does the series end?
Jorge Garcia: Good question. I don’t know. But I think at some point there’s gonna be a big, giant fight for the island. Probably gonna be pretty awesome.

TONY: Sounds like you’re genuinely into the show. Are you as big of a Lost nerd as all the other Lost nerds?
Jorge Garcia: I’m pretty close. I mean, I don’t spend too much time on the Internet trying to figure things out anymore. I let them write the show and whatever gets revealed, I enjoy it. But I do download podcasts about the show, because they tell me what the fans are talking about in a nutshell.

TONY: What’s your weirdest fan experience so far?
Jorge Garcia: I came to L.A. a few years ago, and I went to this late-night taco stand called Benito’s, like, around midnight. And there was a guy there. Later, as I’m picking up my food—’cause you had to wait around and stuff—that same guy showed up. After he’d already left. He had run home and printed a picture of me from the computer. And then he asked me to sign it. To actually go through all that effort!

TONY: It must never cease to surprise you how incredibly rabid some fans are.
Jorge Garcia: Yeah, it never does. A lot of times when I’m shooting the show, I have them in the back of my mind. Sometimes I go, “Wait a minute. We gotta fix this continuity-wise, or else they’re going to be posting on the Internet about this, I know it.” But every now and then there’s some things you’ve just got to be like, “Well, it’s a TV show.”

TONY: Like when?
Jorge Garcia: Like when we were building our campsites. There were a lot of tarps. And so, yeah, there’s apparently a shipment of tarps on the plane. There are boxes of them that we now have access to. [Laughs]

TONY: I wish it had been a shipment of doubloons, because doubloons is one of my favorite words.
Jorge Garcia: You a big fan of the pirate movies?

TONY: Well, only if they employ the word doubloons.
Jorge Garcia: I hear you.

TONY: Or pantaloons.
Jorge Garcia: That’s harder to work in, I think. Because (a) you never seem to be wearing pantaloons, and (b) that’d be something you’d only bring up if you’re making fun of someone’s short pants, like, “Those are borderline pantaloons, I believe.”

Absolutely. Bigger show shot in Hawaii: Lost or Magnum, P.I.?
Jorge Garcia: It depends on how you measure it, I’m going to say.

TONY: In the geek factor, obviously, Lost wins. But not so in the mustache factor.
Jorge Garcia: Yeah, I bet. I actually have a Magnum, P.I. T-shirt that I like to wear around the pool. There’s no picture of him on it, though. It’s just, like, the car.

TONY: Cheech Marin plays Hurley’s dad on the show, which can only mean that Tommy Chong is going to have a meaty role this season, right?
Jorge Garcia: I don’t know. [Laughs]

TONY: Can we please start that rumor?
Jorge Garcia: Sure. Chong is in negotiations.

Source: timeout

Josh Holloway: Break-In Still Gives Me Nightmares

He plays the unflappable Sawyer on Lost, but Josh Holloway says he is still rattled by a brutal 2005 home invasion, which he vows will "never" be repeated.



"Having a gun held to our heads when we're naked in our bedroom at four in the morning is never going to happen to my wife and me again," the actor tells Playboy in its February issue, on stands Jan. 16. "I took the FBI training course. I have home protection."

While at their Hawaii Kai home in 2005, Holloway and his wife Yessica were rousted from bed at gunpoint by a man who took cash and credit cards and then drove off in Holloway's Mercedes-Benz, which police found abandoned a short time later. Last June, Ruben Royce was sentenced to between 13 and 30 years in prison for his three-week crime spree.

"It still gets me," says Holloway. "The guy was a crackhead who had hit 22 people in two and a half weeks. He took an 80-year-old couple and duct-taped them up. He also attempted to murder another guy. I had a nightmare about it last night."

Still, there are dangers to increased home security, says Holloway, who announced last month that he and Yessica are expecting their first child later this year. "Of course, there's also the statistic that owning a gun increases your chances of being shot by 300 percent."

Holloway, who returns for Lost's fifth season on Jan. 21, also sounded off about another brush with Hawaiian law: his 2006 speeding ticket. "It's an island, very easily patrolled, and we are the only big celebrities who stay there all the time," Holloway says of filming Lost in Oahu. "I was going around 50 in a 35 zone, and that's embarrassing. I should have been going faster."

Source: people.com

LOST - LOST CREATORS RAVE ABOUT FOX

LOST creators CARLTON CUSE and DAMON LINDELOF have given the show's star MATTHEW FOX the greatest references as he gets set to wrap up the desert island drama - they're convinced he'll be an Oscar nominee within four years.
Both feel sure the Vantage Point star will turn his back on TV and concentrate on making challenging movies.
Cuse says, "He has that cocktail of dangerous and charming. He has a leading man's good looks, and heroic qualities as an actor."
And Lindelof tells Details magazine, "He has the potential to be a leading man, but I think he's interested in those quirky transformative roles.
"Three, four years from now I can see him getting a Supporting Actor nomination... He wants acting to be hard, to be torture. He does not want to ski the bunny slope."

Source: contactmusic

Matthew Fox: Lost's End Will Be a "Relief"

As Lost nears the start of its fifth and penultimate season, Matthew Fox is greeting it with a mix of reverence — and a readiness to leave island life behind, literally and figuratively.

"Personally, it's a relief," he told Details, as he reflected on the ABC drama's nearing conclusion. "I owe this show a great amount, and I think it's exceptionally good...[but] I am looking forward to the freedom that comes with not working on one project professionally." Lost's fifth season kicks off Jan. 21 on ABC (8 pm/ET).



Fox, who plays Dr. Jack Shepard, opened up about what he envisions in his Lost-free future — both personally and professionally — starting with his plans to move from Hawaii to the mainland when the show ends. "My major motivation is to be closer to family," he said. "My brother is there, my mother is there. We're hoping to break ground [for a house] in March, and it will be completed right around the time we're finishing the last season of Lost in March 2010."

The actor's new home will plant him far from the spotlight in rural Oregon, but close enough to Portland and Seattle to find city life easily with his wife and two children. "I really miss that kind of wide-open space," he explained, "and there's a big part of me that wants the kids to live in that mountain air."

While Fox envisions a secluded home life, he's also candid about what he wants in his very public working life. "I don't have control over what will come my way, but if the opportunities I get excited by keep coming, I'm going to continue working in this business." Lost co-executive producer Damon Lindelof was more specific: "[Fox] has the potential to be a leading man, but I think he's interested in those quirky transformative roles," he said. "Three, four years from now I can see him getting a Supporting Actor nomination."

Yet, Lost isn't over just yet, and Jack still has some serious challenges to face. "When it's all said and done, you'll be able to look at the six seasons of Lost and see a pretty amazing character arc," Fox said. "Jack has been evolving, and not necessarily into a good place. We started the show with him being this hero who had no concept of what that required, sort of trying to live up to the expectations...and then finding the way to redeem himself."

Where Jack's arc will ultimately end, however, will likely remain a mystery until the series' final moments. "This show started with a plane crash on an island in the South Pacific, and it's going to have a very global and epic ending."

Source: tvguide

Mr. Enigma: Michael Emerson of ‘Lost’

In 2001, he won an Emmy for playing the perversely charismatic serial killer William Hinks on The Practice. Apparently, perverse charisma is Michael Emerson’s calling; he’s since earned two Emmy nominations playing the prevaricating and perversely charismatic cult leader Benjamin Linus on Lost—a character that was never intended to be full-time, but, as viewers have come to learn, there’s no denying Ben Linus. Emerson talked with Michael Alan Connelly about the new season.




What’s changed for Ben in Season 5?
He now operates in the other world, off the island. He is less secure and less well fortified, so he has fewer resources. The stakes of his activities may be higher because of the desperation factor, and the quality of having to improvise. He’ll carry on what seems to be his calling or his life’s work or his war, whatever it is—I’m not sure exactly what it .is

That makes two of us. Do you feel the show loses any power now that the characters are off the island?
I think we had a smaller definition of the island than the writers meant. When the island disappeared, everywhere became the island. They’re playing around with the island as some kind of portrait of a thing, but not the thing itself. Wherever we go, it goes also. [Laughs.] Boy, that’s kind of a squirrelly answer. Maybe this is a better overarching image for the season: There’s a great push to reunite—to try to put things and partnerships back together that have fallen apart.


The Others stole away to a place called the Temple. Will we be seeing more of them and learning about the Temple?
Yes and yes. I think we’re going to find them to be less malevolent as time goes by.


If you could get the writers to answer one burning question, what’s at the top of your list?
I’d ask the same big question everyone has: What’s the real deal? Where are we really?


Ben is often reading or quoting authors. Do you take the time to read the books he does?
There are no accidents in the world of props on Lost—the books are carefully chosen. This season, there’s a scene where I’m reading Ulysses by James Joyce. It’s on my winter reading list.



You came to the show late. Did you fit right in?
Not really. It’s a tight-knit cast. The show has generations of actors—I think I’m the third generation, which is Ian Cusick, Elizabeth Mitchell, and me. We hang out a bit; ours is a more shared experience, not being one of the original lovable Lost-aways. I’ve had a solitary time in Hawaii [where the show is shot], which is consistent with my character.



What TV shows do you watch?
Battlestar Galactica, which, like Lost, balances science fiction, adventure, and metaphysics in a good way. And I was thrilled by Deadwood. I love shows where language isn’t just a medium of communication. Deadwood’s was more brutal than any I’ve heard on TV, but it was also more lyric.

Source: nymag.com