Fox By Name Megan Fox takes the machismo of the new Transformers movie in her stride and tells LA correspondent Patricia Danaher about how her strength lies in her sexuality.
Megan fox has just turned 23 (May 16th) and spent her birthday alone in Hawaii. The statuesque beauty may be on a roll professionally, but she says she lives the life of a hermit these days, rarely goes out, is single, with very few friends and she hates the Hollywood scene.
By turns brittle and incredibly frank, Fox is a walking bundle of contradictions, who in spite of her sharp tongue keeps pushing forward in a career which pushes out and then chews up girls like her every year. Over a plate of raw food at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, the svelte star lays if out to me as she sees it.
"I'm kind of a very aggressive human being and I was a very scary teenage girl," she tells me in her opening gambit. Starring in the upcoming Transformers movie Revenge of the Fallen opposite Shia LaBeouf, Fox, whose ancestors come from Tipperary, seems very at home in this macho scenario, where the special effects are the stars of the show.
"I'm making a movie for the masses about robots, I don't need to be a method actor here," she laughs. "But, listen, I get burned constantly, every time I open my mouth, people refuse to understand the intent of what I'm trying to say. But I made a decision early on not to be a bull**** person, because this is a bull**** industry and I need to hold on to my soul and my integrity. I can't compromise and become part of the bull**** and, if that means I get burned for the first few years of my career, then that's what it means."
While it's very refreshing to meet a young actress with this kind of spunk, it's hard to believe this is how she speaks to directors and studios and continues to work. It's clear that she has happily exploited her looks and body to draw attention to herself professionally, posing half naked in several men's magazines. So, where does she think she is professionally right now?
"I think, for now, I'm definitely labelled in the pin-up category. I haven't given people a reason to take my work seriously yet, which is my responsibility. I think the expectation for me, as far as my ability as an actress goes, is very low. I feel like that means I can only ever be an over-achiever when people expect so little from me. I don't have a specific image that I'm hoping to achieve. I just really want it to, at some point, be okay for women to be sexy because I think that's a power, a gift that we were given by God or the universe or whatever. Men were given brute strength. They were given the physical ability to overpower, but we were given sensuality and our feminine wiles.
"Don't be afraid of your vagina. Don't fear your gifts. I don't think there's anything wrong with being sexy or being in your underwear, or being whatever. I think you need to have thoughts in your mind to go behind that image."
Currently single after dating the actor Brian Austin Green for five years, Fox is very much alone these days and spends most of her time by herself, reading and painting.
"I don't really know anything about being single yet, really. I've sort of isolated myself and forced myself to sit and be quiet. And I've been reading a lot and listening to music and trying to just work on myself. Because I was with someone from the time I was 18. And I've never been my own independent adult. Right now there's no space in my head for who's going to be next or how I need to fill my time. I'm trying to expand myself and grow and be comfortable with who I am before I get into another relationship where I'll just repeat a cycle. Otherwise I will have ten failed relationships. I will be Elizabeth Taylor by the time I am 60 and I don't want that."
Fox's next movie, Jennifer's Body, was written by Diablo Cody. She and the p*rn star Jenna Jameson are her role models because of the work they've done, their attitudes to their own sexuality and how they have used the industry which has more usually used and destroyed women.
"Diablo is like a post-feminist, strong woman who is not afraid of being sexual. Her book Candy Girl about her year as a stripper, I enjoyed so much and I admire her intensely. It's all about how powerful your shell is as a female.
"I'm obsessed with Jenna Jameson, not in a sexual way, but for the same reason I love Diablo. She took an industry that is not kind to women and she pretty much owns it now. She is a very successful, very shrewd, business-minded woman who used something that people think makes women weak and made herself extremely strong."
Given the image she has cultivated for herself as a femme fatale, it is interesting to hear Fox admit how naïve she is around men and how her usually sharp instincts have not always served her well in the dating department.
"I'm kind of a recluse. I'm a hermit and it's because I do have a great fear of Hollywood, just watching what it does to people. You have to be a really strong human being to survive it, as a girl especially. So I try to avoid the Hollywood scene as much as possible and people who enjoy the Hollywood scene -- that's usually a red flag to me. Some people might think my life is boring, but I haven't been to rehab yet, so I think I'm doing something right!
"Once you enter the dating world and you realise it's nothing like those Disney movies you watched when you were a little kid, you just become more guarded. And maybe I became jaded more quickly because of how exposed I was to so many different types of people at a young age. I think 'weary' is the word. Especially because of my image, I don't think people do take me seriously yet. I don't trust male intentions, usually, because they don't approach me for intellectual conversation." HQ
- Patricia Danaher
