Success finds Maggie

[Sydney]

(slight spoilers for episode Abandoned)

By William Keck, USA TODAY

OAHU, Hawaii ? What does it feel like to have the No. 1 movie in America and to be in the cast of TV's most talked-about show?

This week, only Lost star Maggie Grace can answer that question. With Grace's fright flick, The Fog, taking in $12.2 million, she topped veteran movie actresses Kirsten Dunst (Elizabethtown, $11 million) and Keira Knightley (Domino, $4.7 million) at the box office. And with an average of 23 million viewers a week, Lost is this season's No. 3 series, behind only CSI on CBS and ABC's Desperate Housewives.


After tonight's episode (9 ET/PT), ABC's Lost goes on a two-week hiatus with reruns, but then Grace, 22, will get the spotlight when new episodes resume Nov. 9. In that show, her character, Shannon Rutherford, flashes back to the death of her father, Donald, who appeared in a season premiere hospital scene with Matthew Fox's Dr. Jack.

"Maggie has had the difficult task of playing the (mean character), which has sometimes been at the cost of the audience's sympathy," Lost executive producer Carlton Cuse says. "But her popularity is on a major upswing. We're going to see the event that made her the kind of person she is. I think the audience will find a new level of sympathy for her."

At the end of tonight's episode, ABC will tease that another series regular will "be lost forever" on the Nov. 9 installment. Last season, Grace's co-star and friend Ian Somerhalder, who played her stepbrother, Boone, got the ax. "It was tough; Ian was really happy here," Grace says over lunch in Oahu, where Lost shoots. "He had hired a Realtor and found out (about his character's death) the day before he was supposed to look" for a house.

Grace welcomed back Somerhalder when he returned in early fall to shoot scenes for Shannon's flashback.

Boone could reappear with Shannon in other characters' flashbacks, as this season explores the survivors' pre-plane-crash connections. "Not everybody is interconnected," Cuse says. "But there are certain ways in which these people have been in each other's lives."

Grace's island stay has lasted long enough for her to purchase a home not far from Honolulu. She plans to live there for as long as her Lost run continues. "I love it here," she says, "but it's not a place you can really pursue acting."


Courtesy of USATODAY.com