'Lost' helps O'Quinn
find elusive star turn

The series is filmed on Oahu, with five or six of each episode’s eight shooting days spent outdoors, often at the beach location on the island’s north shore.

The pilot was shot there a year ago. Then filming resumed July 15, which happened to be O’Quinn’s 52nd birthday.

Revealing his bent for numerology, O’Quinn notes that five and two equal seven, and that July is the seventh month, then reels off other instances of seven looming large in his life.

“I told Lori, ‘Things are at a crossroads. And if “Lost” isn’t the crossroads, it’s the bridge to the other side.’ I believe in fate.”

Fate has been mighty good to “Lost” so far. But even a believer like O’Quinn has kept his head: “I’m always being the old warrior, telling everybody, ‘Don’t buy a house. Let’s be patient and see how it goes. Do good work — that’s all.”’

A native of a small town on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, O’Quinn fell into acting in his teens, then, as his college graduation neared, “I didn’t want to look for a real job. So I decided to see if I could make it as an actor.”

Riding lessons
He met his wife-to-be a few years later, when, appearing in a play in Baltimore, he learned he was cast in Michael Cimino’s Western epic “Heaven’s Gate.” With a sudden need for riding lessons, he tracked down Lori, an instructor on her family’s farm outside the city.

Then, when his play closed and he ran out of money waiting to be summoned to Montana to shoot his scenes, he struck a deal with Lori’s parents to muck stalls in exchange for a room and more lessons. Three months later, in September 1979, he left to do “Heaven’s Gate.” In November he and Lori were married. “Heaven’s Gate” was a legendary disaster. But they’ve been together 25 years (which adds up to seven).

Now, with their two sons off at college, “I feel like we’re back to how we were when we first got together,” O’Quinn says. On Oahu, they rent a house in the hills “with live boar outside our window and cocks crowing in the morning. It’s paradise.”

On the most recent “Lost,” Locke declared that “Everyone gets a new life on this island.” And that maybe includes the actor who plays him, a long-familiar face who might at last be a star.

“It would be nice to think about more doors opening, to be able to pick and choose roles,” O’Quinn freely admits. “But I’m not anxious to go anywhere else right now. I could do this for a while.”

By his reckoning, at least seven years should be a Locke.

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