It wasn’t easy being a fan of "Lost," the serialized TV drama that followed a group of plane crash survivors on an island shrouded in mystery and intrigue.

Every week for six seasons, "Lost" had the uncanny ability to leave viewers begging for more. Byzantine by design, "Lost" delivered eyebrow-raising cliffhangers on a regular basis.

But fans were not the only ones anxiously awaiting each new episode. The cast had questions, too.

"Absolutely," said Daniel Dae Kim, who starred as Jin-Soo Kwon, a Korean passenger who worked as an enforcer for his industrialist father-in-law.

"When we got our scripts — and I think I can speak for the rest of the cast — we tore through those scripts for a number of reasons, but I think the most important of which was we wanted to know what happened in the story line."

Each script brought an air of excitement.

"When you got it, you devoured it," said Henry Ian Cusick, who played DesmondHume, a shipwrecked Scotsman who was already stranded on the island when the newcomers arrived. "We would come in and talk about it. ‘What do you think is going on?’ We never knew the complete story line. We were just as much in the dark as the audience."

"Lost," which debuted 10 years ago Monday, centered on passengers of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, a commercial jetliner flying from Sydney to Los Angeles that crashed on a seemingly deserted island. The eclectic mix of survivors became unwitting players in a cosmic drama that explored themes of good vs. evil, spirituality and redemption.

The island featured bizarre inhabitants, from a murderous smoke monster to a man living in an underground bunker who felt the world would end if he didn’t type specific numbers into a computer every 108 minutes.

The show’s complexity — which sometimes infuriated fans and critics — defined "Lost." But for the cast, the series became its own defining experience. A decade after it began, "Lost" remains a benchmark for those who brought the mystery to television viewers around the world. It launched careers and created friendships that are still going strong. It turned them into stars.

"Everything I have done professionally I owe to ‘Lost,’" said Kim, whose success on the series led to a role as a regular on "Hawaii Five-0."

Before "Lost," Kim had small roles in film and TV projects.

"I considered myself a working actor," he said. "But to be elevated beyond that takes something special, and that something special was ‘Lost.’"

Jorge Garcia, who starred as Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on "Lost" and who recently became a series regular on "Five-0," also views "Lost" as life-changing. Hurley, a lottery winner who felt cursed by the numbers that won him millions, was one of the show’s central characters.

"Everything about my life is different because of ‘Lost,’" Garcia said. "‘Lost’ bought me a house. ‘Lost’ gave me an opportunity to see all kinds of places all over the world."

The ensemble cast of the ABC show started with 14 major roles that reflected a diversity not seen on television at the time. It made heroes out of characters — and the actors who played them — that TV traditionally marginalized.

"‘Lost’ challenged the idea of what a leading man could look like," Kim said. "We had Matthew (Fox) and Josh (Holloway), who were white, tall, fit and good-looking. But we also had Jorge, Naveen (Andrews), myself, Harold (Perrineau), all of whom got to be heroes in ways that TV audiences really hadn’t seen before."

Kim Could speak Korean, but he worried more about whether he could act in Korean, which is different from simply repeating dialogue, he said. The whole thing made him nervous all six seasons.

"I felt the weight of all the Koreans who would be watching the show," said Kim, who was born in Korea but raised in New York and Pennsylvania, where Korean was spoken in his home.

"I wanted Koreans to be proud of the work that we were doing," he said. "So when I would read a lot of the criticism of my language ability, it was pretty painful."

Yunjin Kim played Jin’s wife, Sun-Hwa Kwon. They start the series as a troubled couple with many secrets, including the fact that Sun had learned English without her husband’s knowledge.

When she first auditioned, it was for the part of Kate, which ultimately went to Evangeline Lilly. Even so, the creators of "Lost" liked Kim so much, they wrote her a part, she said.

But the scope of "Lost" was still an unknown, and how Kim would fit into it required a leap of faith, she said.

"I knew they wanted to use the fact that I was bilingual," she said in a call from Los Angeles. "I knew I would be speaking Korean, and that was pretty much all the information I had."

The large cast created a shooting schedule that sometimes gave actors weeks off between episodes or fewer lines when the focus of the story was on a particular character.

"It was such an ensemble work, and it wasn’t something I was used to," said Yunjin Kim, who now stars on the ABC series "Mistresses." "It taught me a lot. It’s about passing the ball around, and whoever is holding the ball has our entire support and love and energy."

Secrecy was the key to keeping the mystery alive, and that meant scripts — especially for the season finales — often arrived with missing pages.

Kim recalled that once, as the cameras were about to roll, "Lost" director and writer Jack Ben­der leaned in close and whispered Kim’s lines into her ear.

"And of course we had to shoot the scene and you have to say the lines loud," she said. "I’m like, Should I whisper these lines? Other people are going to hear them. And there are extras hanging around. It was very funny."

The fans often surprised her, too. They would watch episodes and see details that fueled fan theories about the story, Kim said.

"I was amazed," she said. "I would turn around and say, Am I blind? What’s wrong with me? How is it I missed all these things and all the viewers saw this?"

Cusick, whose character, Desmond, arrived at the start of the second season, was initially cast for three episodes. He went on to become a central character and a fan favorite through the series finale. His work earned him an Emmy nomination in 2006.

"Lost" was a dream job, said Cusick in a call from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is on location for the CW television series "The 100."

For the first time in his career, TV reporters wanted to interview him. Strangers stopped him in public and ask to take his photograph.

"We were hit with instant fame that was kind of mind-blowing," he said. "It was all brand new and it was exciting and life-changing."

When the series first started, the cast would get together to watch it at the home of whoever was featured in that episode.

"It was a great way to celebrate the show," said Garcia, whose Hurley was another fan favorite. "Although when it was your episode, it was nerve-wracking."

Daniel Dae Kim would try to distract himself when it was his turn to host a cast viewing. Afterward, when everyone had left, he would watch the episode again.

"I watched a lot of the episodes twice because, quite frankly, there were some times where I was lost," he said.

But there are moments from "Lost" that require no explanation, memories — flashbacks — that improve with time: sitting around between scenes strumming guitars and singing, playing games, cracking jokes like kids at summer camp.

One of Daniel Dae Kim’s favorite memories comes from the final moments of the series, which were shot at Sacred Hearts Academy in Kai­muki.

Throughout that sixth, final season, he felt they were shooting scenes for a legacy. But in that last scene in the school’s chapel — in the spirit of the show — he found himself looking forward.

"What was running through my mind a lot was, one day when I am old and gray, I am going to watch this," he said. "I thought this is something my future self is going to look back on and remember."

ENLARGE CROSSWORD PUZZLE