WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written back in 2012.

Audiences may have a hard time recognizing Matthew Fox when they see him as serial killer Picasso in Rob Cohen’s “Alex Cross.” The actor, best known for his roles on “Party of Five” and “Lost,” underwent one of the most visceral transformations any actor has gone through in a 2012 movie as he slimmed down, donned some tattoos and trained very hard to portray one of the scariest psychopaths we have seen in a movie. After watching him in “Alex Cross,” you will be ever so eager to find out how Fox pulled off such a stunning transformation.

Fox ended up losing 40 pounds to get Picasso’s toned physique down just right, and it forced him to give up eating all the things he likes to eat. This was especially hard on Fox’s mom whom he described as Italian and a fantastic cook to boot. Her favorite thing to do is feed her son great food, and unfortunately she couldn’t do so for several months when he signed up to play Picasso. According to Fox, his mom could not stand the fact he had to lose all this weight and that it really upset her. I imagine, however, now that the movie is being released, she can feed her son everything he could ever want to eat.

Fox worked with Simon Waterson, a personal trailer whose credits include helping Daniel Craig achieve the ripped body he needed to play James Bond, working with Jake Gyllenhaal on “Prince of Persia,” and in assisting Chris Evans to become the best Captain America he could ever hope to be. Fox went about describing the training he endured under Waterson’s tutelage.

“We worked really hard on this for five months,” Fox said. “The training sessions were mostly circuit training. You’re going non-stop from exercise to exercise, never taking any breaks for about an hour and a half. I was burning a lot of calories and working on certain muscle groups. It was very strategic on his part and very gradual.”

The role of Picasso forced Fox to travel to some dark places in order to better understand this particular serial killer. As a result, it challenged the actor to adopt a mindset no sane person would ever dare explore. However, it also allowed Fox to play a character which strongly differed from the ones he previously portrayed.

“It was very liberating to some degree to be able to play a guy that has no moral compass and is sort of supremely arrogant about the notion that he doesn’t have a moral compass and is out to prove to the world that a moral compass is weakness and is false actually,” Fox said.

“It was also interesting to think about what it would be like to really truly believe that and to really hold yourself that arrogantly above the rest because you can do the things that nobody else can or thinks that they can’t,” Fox continued. “A sense of power comes along with that when a guy like that feels like he has the ultimate trump card, like he cannot be trumped and he goes into every human interaction that usually ends up with him slowly snuffing out a life. He would look at that as giving a gift so it’s a very powerful place to exist, sort of invincibility.”

The lengths Fox went to in portraying Picasso greatly impressed his “Alex Cross” co-stars, especially Tyler Perry who plays the title role.

“He is brilliant,” Perry said. “The amount of dedication and the weight loss is this much of where he went. He really went to where ever he had to go. I don’t even want to know what dark places he went to to get that character, but he was amazing.”

After watching Matthew Fox in “Alex Cross,” you will find yourself in complete agreement with what Perry said. Actors revel at the chance to reinvent themselves when playing a character, and Fox got the chance to do just that with this role. Movies are full of crazy characters who haunt our dreams, and Fox’s Picasso is just the latest.

SOURCES:

Marc Malkin, “Matthew Fox Explains Shocking Weight Loss for ‘Alex Cross,’” E! Online, September 18, 2012.

Fred Topel, “Freaking Me Out: Matthew Fox on ‘Alex Cross,’ ‘World War Z’ and ‘Lost,‘” Crave Online, October 15, 2012.

Kevin P. Sullivan, “Matthew Fox Went To ‘Dark Places’ For ‘Alex Cross,’ Tyler Perry Says,” MTV Movies Blog, June 27, 2012.