LOS ANGELES -- Sure, on Lost Matthew Fox can perform open-heart surgery with a bottle of bourbon and knitting needles from a plane crash.
But assemble a Speed Racer race track for his 6-year-old son? Now there's a challenge.
"I did a little thing for the Mattel line in New York and a week after that we got a huge box in Hawaii and my little boy flipped. Then I spent the next week on my hands and knees constructing those tracks," he says, adding with a trace of a sigh and a smile, "They've got a lot of them."
Toys aside, the actor says he signed on to play mystery-man Racer X in the adaptation of the 1960s cartoon because, like the Wachowski brothers, he finally wanted to make a film for the entire family.
"I haven't done anything my kids can see," says Fox who also has an 8-year-old daughter.
Still, just because you're the star doesn't necessarily mean you'll get free merchandise from the movie first.
Emile Hirsch simply went to a Target store in New Mexico with family members and loaded up on Racer-related stuff. "We were playing with it for hours."
Couldn't he have just had some cars and tracks shipped to him for free?
"We couldn't wait," Hirsch says. "I'm not going to get on the phone, 'Listen, you didn't give me this.' "
