Megan Fox was once the hottest ticket in Hollywood. But after a career fumble - along
with a whole lot of media around her personal life - she found herself as
a sort of outsider in the industry. Even with a few attempts at reinvention and explanation,
Fox still struggles to shake off the sketchy things that plague her reputation.
When Fox met her husband,
actor Brian Austin Green, on the 2003 sitcom Hope & Faith, she was barely 18, and he was 30.
She told The New York Times Magazine,
"I liked him right away. Everyone was around the monitor watching a scene,
and Brian accidentally touched my leg. I remember literal electricity shooting through me
and out [of] me from every direction. It was like magic."
"We have a really amazing relationship."
Three kids and one divorce attempt later, Fox and Green officially split in May 2020.
According to Green, Fox had traveled out of the country to film a movie and
came back no longer wanting to be in the relationship. He explained on his podcast,
"She said, 'You know what, I realized while I was out of the country working alone,
that I feel more like myself and I liked myself better during that experience.
And I think that's something that might be worth trying for me.'"
But after a quick bout of professional "me time," just one month later,
Fox was spotted all cozied-up with rapper and actor, Machine Gun Kelly.
She captioned an Instagram post in August 2020,
"Achingly Beautiful Boy […] My heart is yours."
For his part, Green seemed to take it all in stride, and hopped on Instagram to post photos
of their three sons with pretty much the same caption, except from him to his boys.
Machine Gun Kelly confirmed his suspected
relationship with Fox on Instagram in the summer of 2020 after a lot of speculation about the pair.
In a joint interview on Lala Kent's Give Them Lala...With Randall podcast,
Fox predicted wild times were ahead when she learned that Kelly had been cast alongside
her in the film Midnight in the Switchgrass. For his part, Kelly said that while on set,
he just sat outside his trailer hoping Fox would look at him. Fox then explained
that she did Kelly's astrological chart just two days after she met him, adding,
"I went deep right away. I knew before I even did his chart,
I said to him, he has a Pisces moon. I could tell by his energy."
"Great work experience."
During an appearance on the Hollywood Raw podcast, her ex,
Brian Austin Green, discussed how he learned about the new couple, revealing,
"I found out in my own way. And that's as much detail as I'll give you on that one.
No, I didn't read about it or anything like that."
In a 2011 interview
with Details magazine, Fox's Transformers co-star,
Shia LaBeouf, revealed that the pair had gotten pretty close during production. He claimed,
"Look, you're on the set for six months, with someone who's rooting to be attracted to you,
and you're rooting to be attracted to them. […] Neither one of us, I think,
were in love. Just sort of experimenting or whatever."
"So, this is all part of your elaborate plan to keep me interested?"
While Fox got engaged to Brian Austin Green that same year, the timeline on that remains unclear.
Still, seven years later, during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live,
Fox finally confirmed LaBeouf's claims, adding,
"I would confirm that it was romantic. I love him. I've never been really quiet about that."
"So it was like an on-set romance that didn't go anywhere afterwards?”
“Yeah."
Back in 2011, Fox heard the Botox
rumors in the media - and dedicated an entire Facebook photo album to trying to disprove them.
But it didn't quiet the noise. A plastic surgeon who had not treated her later
told Radar Online that the stunner likely had some help getting her famous face. He claimed,
"I suspect that she has had a nose refinement and some facial fillers. […] Her lips are more full
and her cheekbones are higher, likely the result of Restylane or Juvederm."
"I am a god.”
“Ok."
Another surgeon similarly dedicated an entire
blog post to claiming she's likely had work done, adding,
"If you pay close attention to pictures of Megan Fox a few years ago compared to today
you will notice a subtle difference in her nose and a definite difference in her breast size."
Fox has made
several comments over the years that many deemed to be transphobic.
In 2008, during an interview with GQ, she joked that she was secretly a man, saying,
"If my mom were to tell me that I'd been born with male and female genitalia and that she
had to make a choice, I would believe her. That's the upside of dating a woman who's almost a man.
She likes the same things that you like, but she has a vagina!"
A year later, she told another version of the joke to E! host
Giulianna Rancic on the Golden Globes red carpet, when she said,
"I'm a man. I'm so painfully insecure. I'm on the verge of vomiting now.
I am so horrified that I am here and embarrassed. I'm scared."
So, is Fox actually transphobic or is she just trying to be shocking? It's probably worth noting
that the openly bi actress has spoken out against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in more recent years,
and has also opened up about letting her sons express their gender in whatever ways
make them feel happy, comfortable, and confident.
"I'm trying to teach him to be confident no matter what anyone else says."
When Fox compared Transformers director
Michael Bay to a Nazi, the trash talk didn't go over well with producer Steven Spielberg,
who reportedly urged Bay to fire her from the franchise. Fox told Wonderland magazine in 2009,
"He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work for,
but when you get him away from set, and he's not in director mode,
I kind of really enjoy his personality because he's so awkward, so hopelessly awkward."
Maybe Fox was delivering some sort of compliment, but nothing
about that statement was flattering - and the interview not only nearly destroyed her career,
but also stirred up a hornet's nest of bad press about a movie she was supposed to be promoting.
Bay, however, actually thought the whole thing was amusing. He told GQ in 2011,
"I wasn't hurt, because I know that's just Megan. Megan loves to get a response.
And she does it in kind of the wrong way. I'm sorry, Megan. I'm sorry I made you work twelve
hours. I'm sorry that I'm making you show up on time. Movies are not always warm and fuzzy."
"Bay talked about...Finding literally the most gorgeous
18-year-old there is out there, which I think we did. We did. I think we did."
But despite Bay admitting Spielberg was behind her firing from the Transformers franchise,
Fox claimed otherwise. At the time, a rep for the actress told People magazine,
"It was her decision not to return. She wishes the franchise the best."
In June 2020,
an old Jimmy Kimmel interview with Fox went viral on Twitter,
where the actress described being an extra on the set of Michael Bay's Bad Boys II. She said,
"I was wearing a stars and stripes bikini and a red cowboy hat and six-inch heels, and he
approved it. They said, you know, Michael, she's 15, so you can't sit her at the bar and she can't
have a drink in her hands. His solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath
the waterfall getting soaking wet. […] So that's sort of a microcosm of how Bay's mind works."
"At 15. I was in 10th grade. Wow."
Kimmel then responded,
"Yeah, well, that's really a microcosm of how all our minds work - but some of us have
the decency to repress those thoughts and pretend that they don't exist."
Although the joke was a hit with the studio audience, this led to the hashtag "Cancel Kimmel,"
with fans dema nding the host apologize for making light of Fox's workplace objectification.
In response to this viral campaign, Fox published a lengthy post to Instagram,
claiming that she was never physically mistreated by either Bay, nor Steven Speilberg, noting,
"[I was] never assaulted or preyed upon. […] There are many names that deserve to be going viral in
cancel culture right now, but they are safely stored in the fragmented recesses of my heart."
As fans have witnessed,
Fox almost never passes up an opportunity to trash Michael Bay. Maybe that's warranted,
maybe that's not. But she also seems to have changed her tune in more recent years.
According to a source cited by Radar Online, Fox eventually apologized to Bay
reportedly just to get to work again. An insider alleged to the outlet,
"Since Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, [Megan] hasn't been getting the leading lady
roles she had hoped for and [she] was starting to get concerned that it was because of what she said
about Michael. So, she swallowed her pride, picked up the phone, and spoke with him to clear the air
and apologize. She told him how thankful she was to have been [cast] by him in the first place,
and that she was totally out of line to say what she said."
"You guys don't really wanna do this again, right?"
Bay subsequently cast Fox in the leading role of April O'Neil in 2014's Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles as she continued to sing his praises, telling Entertainment Weekly,
"He was one of the most lovely people that I dealt with in making this movie. […] I've
always loved Michael. We've had our battles in the past but even [then]
I've been really outspoken about difficulties we've had. He can be very vulnerable, and he's
very likable and loveable. I've always been very vocal about that as well. But,
sometimes we clash because we both have very willful, powerful personalities."
Fox apparently doesn't recognize the hypocrisy
of interviews like the one she gave to The New York Times Magazine in 2009, when she said,
"Women tear each other apart. Girls think I'm a s---, and I've been in the same relationship
since I was 18. The problem is, if they think you're attractive, you're either stupid or
a w---- or a dumb w----. The instinct among girls is to attack the jugular."
But in that same interview,
Fox explained that she had also been sold by Hollywood for her body, adding,
"That's O.K, if you know how to use it. Being a celebrity
is like being a sacrificial lamb […] And I created a character for the sacrifice.
I'm not willing to give my true self up. It's a testament to my true personality
that I would go so far as to make up another personality to give to the world."
"I don't know what I was talking about."
But more than a decade later - with the Me Too movement fully on the radar - Fox
elaborated on the admittedly not at all sketchy reason that led her to take this position.
When the bombshell allegations against Hollywood
mogul Harvey Weinstein came to light, the Me Too movement was in full view of the public spotlight.
Hundreds of actresses shared their horrific experiences in order to bring awareness
to how women are often treated within the industry. But, at least according to her,
Fox had her reasons for remaining silent. She told the New York Times in 2018,
"I don't want to say this about myself, but let's say that I was ahead of my time and so
people weren't able to understand. Instead, I was rejected because of qualities that are
now being praised in other women coming forward. And because of my experience,
I feel it's likely that I will always be just out of the collective understanding.
I don't know if there will ever be a time where I'm considered normal or relatable or likable."
“Do you wanna take a stand here?"
Fox explained her belief that if she had come forward with allegations,
people would have inevitably victim-shamed her due to her public persona. She added,
"Even with the Me Too movement, and everyone coming out with stories - and one could assume
that I probably have quite a few stories, and I do - I didn't speak out for many reasons.
I just didn't think based on how I'd been received by people, and by feminists, that
I would be a sympathetic victim. And I thought if ever there were a time where the world would agree
that it's appropriate to victim-shame someone, it would be when I come forward with my story."
"We can finish this."
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