Actor Matthew Fox saw his career take off in the 1990s with the role of Charlie Salinger in the American TV series "Party of Five," and he gained even more popularity as Jack Shephard, the central character in the innovative series "Lost." Now, though, his performance in the movie, "Emperor," in which he plays the role of U.S. intelligence officer Gen. Bonner Fellers, who investigates the wartime guilt of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously known as Emperor Showa) is surely his biggest movie role to date, coming as it does after 2008's "Vantage Point."

Sitting down in a Roppongi suite with Fox — who has enough ink on his forearms to get him thrown out of most hot-spring resorts in Japan — I mention to him how director Steven Soderbergh has quit making movies, saying all the interesting stuff is happening in TV these days. I ask Fox why he's moving in the other direction, as he's been quoted as saying he's "done" with TV.

"I agree with him," says Fox, "because there's just an enormous amount of really good writing and storytelling going on in the sort of 10- to 13-episode cable format, all these cool shows that are happening right now. At the same time, I think the film industry is really struggling to find what the new paradigm is going to be. It's going through a big business shift in the way the movies are financed and what kind of movies are made."