Getting stranded on an inhospitable island with a bunch of nefarious characters and a blood-thirsty beast that lurks in the bushes has turned out to be a good thing for Dominic Monaghan.

The British actor acquired cult fame status by playing the hairy-footed Hobbit Merry Brandybuck in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. And now his smoldering portrayal as tortured rocker Charlie on ABC’s “Lost” (tonight at 8) has positioned him as one of the hit show’s breakout stars.

“It’s great to be in a show that people actually watch,” Monaghan told the Daily News recently.
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All the world knows Dominic Monaghan as Merry Brandybuck, one of those brave li’l hobbits from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Now he has another major hit on his hands with ABC’s Lost , the suspense drama about plane-crash survivors stranded on a desert isle where something even scarier than Jerri Manthey is roaming the forest. The 28-year-old Brit plays Charlie, the junkie rock star, whose tragic backstory is revealed tonight at 8 pm/ET. Yes, Charlie finally gets his very own flashback episode! Just before jetting off to Lost ‘s Hawaiian set, Monaghan sat down with TV Guide Online in Hollywood, where he lives during his downtime, to give us a juicy preview.

LOTR took you three years in New Zealand. Now you’re sequestered in Hawaii for Lost . When do you see your family? Or are ya on the run, like Kate? Dominic Monaghan: Yeah, kind of! But my parents are pretty much like me. They move around quite a lot. Right now, they’re living in Madrid. They’re not gypsies, but they’re traveling folk who like to move about. As kids, we moved every few years to different places in Europe. I think that’s what’s made me the type of guy who enjoys picking up his life and moving somewhere else. It’s no hardship for me living in new countries and getting used to different cultures. It keeps me alive and happy.
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No more Mr. Nice Hobbit.

Dominic Monaghan, the beloved Merry Brandybuck in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, stars as Charlie, a one-hit-wonder musician turned drug addict, in “Lost” (tonight at 8 on WCVB, Ch. 5). What the Frodo is going on here?

“I struggled for the past three or four years or so with most of the people internationally knowing me as a very cute, adorable, sweet-hearted, nonthreatening kind of boy,” Monaghan said in a recent telephone interview.
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Dominic Monaghan conquered the big-screen in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and is now grabbing the brass ring on the small screen with ABC’s new drama, “Lost.”

Monaghan plays Charlie, the one-hit rocker on the show about a group of airline crash survivors stranded on an island – which has become one of the few breakout hits of the season. He says he’s enjoying the challenge of playing a character coping with withdrawal from a heroin addiction, but is more intrigued by Charlie’s struggle with issues of faith.

“I was brought up in England in a relatively Roman Catholic faith,” says the 28-year-old Monaghan, who was born in Berlin and later moved to Manchester with his father, a teacher, his mother, a nurse, and his older brother.
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Dominic Monaghan is calling from paradise. Currently residing on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, The Lord of the Rings star is shopping for a birthday present for his mother. An avid surfer, he is enjoying his time on the tropical isle, but this is hardly a vacation. Instead he is starring as Charlie, a washed-up musician who survives a plane crash and must start a new life on a deserted island on ABC’s Lost, one of the fall’s most anticipated television shows. The brainchild of Alias creator J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof (formerly a writer/producer on Crossing Jordan ), Lost features a large ensemble cast and some ongoing mysteries that are sure to keep viewers guessing. Little is initially revealed about Charlie–the bass player in a one-hit-wonder band whose members, he insists, are still together and due for a comeback–and early hints indicate he’s hiding a pretty big secret.

Occasionally during our interview he stops to chat with a passerby who recognizes him from his role as the mischievous Hobbit, Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck, from the Rings trilogy, and the actor is always gracious and friendly. He relished his time on the epic and remains close with his co-stars; three of the four hobbits will be reuniting in Hawaii for New Year’s Eve. But he is clearly excited about his new project. Monaghan won the role of Charlie, even though the role was originally conceived for an older actor. “He was supposed to be a has-been rocker whose band had fallen off the map, like, 15 years earlier, but Dominic is 25 years old,” Lindelof told Back Stage West . “So, he came in and read and just brought this great sense of humor to everything, [so] that we just rethought the character and said, ‘Well, what if he wasn’t an ex-rocker, but he was a one-hit wonder, and he just didn’t realize it yet.’”
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Dominic Monaghan, an actor best known as one of the guardians of the ring in the Oscar-winning “Lord of the Rings” movies, is on the phone from Hawaii, where he’s just embarked on another jewelry quest, this time searching for earrings to send his mother for her birthday. There doesn’t have to be anything mystical about the earrings, but they can’t be too dangly. Along the way, there are certainly myriad obstacles. Over the course of a 25-minute interview, Monaghan is stopped repeatedly for autographs and pictures. He’s also accosted by one person who knows the unassuming thespian looks familiar, but can’t identify him. Monaghan cops to being an actor, but notes only that he’s filming “Lost” on the island for ABC.

A minute later, the same person returns, more confident.

“Were you in that hobbit thing?” “Yeah, that’s right, I was one of the hobbits,” Monaghan says, only slightly drawn out. “I was at the shop across the street looking for earrings for my mum, but do you know any other craft-y shops?”
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When Dominic Monaghan came zooming back from Middle Earth, he hit with a resounding thud.

“My first year in Los Angeles was pretty hellish,” says the British actor who played Merry in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. “I came over here after the high point of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ and I saw all my friends jumping around to jobs, and I had nothing.”

He’s found work now. The 28-year-old is co-starring in the ABC Wednesday night series “Lost,” the latest action ride from J.J. Abrams (“Alias”).

The expansive cast also includes Matthew Fox (“Party of Five”) and Ian Somerhalder (“Rules of Attraction”).
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It’s one thing to try to get into character as a produce-swiping Hobbit, quite another to cop the stance of a guy who once sang, “You’re a slave to the money, then you die.”

But so it is that Dominic Monaghan, his image set indelibly in the minds of this generation’s “Lord of the Rings” fans as the diminutive but gallant Meriadoc Brandybuck, gets on with the rest of his acting life, playing a fading rock star stranded on a deserted tropical island on ABC’s “Lost.”

Monaghan’s character, Charlie, is one of 48 survivors of a horrific airplane crash. The rest of the ensemble cast includes Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Ian Somerhalder, Jorge Garcia, Maggie Grace, Malcolm David Kelley, Naveen Andrews, Harold Perrineau, Josh Holloway, Terry O’Quinn, Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjim Kim.
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Just as viewers will be learning new facets of these characters on a weekly basis, so the actors themselves are not being made privy to any advance revelations unless their characters already would know about them within the context of the story. And the cast also has been instructed not to let any of their co-stars know of personal secrets their character is keeping under wraps.

Thus Monaghan, for example, knew Charlie’s secret from square one, although his castmates did not — and while viewers are let in on the secret early on as well, its nature is such that the young actor admits he has no idea whether Charlie ultimately will turn out to be a good guy or a bad guy.

“Charlie has been in a couple of places in his life that have sent him over the edge, whether because people have badly mistreated him or perhaps his family hasn’t given him the respect or support he really needed,” Monaghan reveals cautiously.

“I’ve always enjoyed playing people who appear to be one thing but are actually something else. The Charlie that he puts out there and shows the other characters isn’t really the Charlie that he is comfortable with. He is still playing to [the others] as an audience. As an actor, I have to play him right now in a way that I hope will keep the options open for him to go in any direction we need to take.

“That means I can’t hit any clear ‘good guy’ beats or ‘bad guy’ beats, because soon Charlie is going to need to confide in someone to help him through the bad times and if he makes the wrong choice, that person could use his secret against him, so Charlie is actually a little more cynical and suspicious than he might want to be ordinarily.”

Zap2it

Dominic Monaghan thinks it’s a natural move — follow the biggest film trilogy with one of the biggest television shows of the season.

“You’re never going to have a more successful trilogy in your repertoire,” he says of “The Lord of the Rings” films, “and that’s fine with me. I’m all about the work. I don’t need to have box office gold every single time. I just want to work on material I like.”

Enter: “Lost,” a new television drama from J.J. Abrams, the man behind “Alias.” In the new series, which finds a plane load of disparate types struggling to survive on an island, Monaghan plays a rock musician with a nasty drug habit. He’s forced to face his demons and determine out how he and the others can get back home safely.
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