Matthew Fox: "I Was Terribly Embarrassed" by My DUI

USMagazine, Wednesday, October 17, 2012, 6:45am (PDT)

The last 14 months have been rough for Matthew Fox -- a fact the actor freely admitted during his appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show October 17.

The Lost alum, 46, sat down with talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, 54, to discuss his alleged fight with a female bus driver in August 2011 and his DUI arrest in May 2012.

"There's been some negative things written about me and said about me in the last year," Fox said. "There is a woman in Cleveland who that claims that I hit her. . .  I think she specifically says that I hit her in private parts of her body, actually."

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The alleged incident occurred when Fox was shooting the film Alex Cross in Cleveland, Ohio. "It's been a very tough year for myself and my family," Fox said. "It's difficult to be accused of something that you did not do.  I've never hit a woman in my life. Never have, never will. That's not a part of who I am as a man and hold that very dear to how I define my character. So that's been very difficult."

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According to Fox, bus driver Heather Bormann was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"I was actually sucker punched in the face by a man and I retaliated against the man that sucker punched me in the face. So a fight broke out and she was a woman that was in proximity to that, and she decided that she was going to write up a different version of events that happened that night and try and extort money from me. That was what went down," Fox explained. "And it went into first a criminal case. Because she alleged that I hit her."

He added, "The prosecutors in Cleveland took about six seconds to see that it was hoax and threw that out. But then it moved into a civil case and we had to depose witnesses and find the truth and it took quite a long time. So now it's in the past and the case was dismissed. Now I can finally speak my side of the story for the first time."

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The actor also opened up about his more recent DUI in Bend, Oregon, where he lives with his wife, Margherita Ronchi, and their daughter Kyle and son Byron. "I was not happy about the DUI at all. I was terribly embarrassed by that. And take full responsibility for it. I really own that and have done every single thing the state of Oregon requires for a first time DUI offender. I have learned a ton. I did four weeks of alcohol informational training. And just learned an enormous amount."

"One of the statistics that I learned is that 50 percent of people that get one DUI will get another," the former Party of Five star continued. "I found that pretty astounding after what I've been through. I will absolutely not be in the statistic.  There is just no way."

This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Matthew Fox: "I Was Terribly Embarrassed" by My DUI