Megan Fox's hell in Hollywood: the years with the label of s-x symbol and her reinvention as an actress
The actress confessed everything she suffered from the misogynistic behavior of the industry in her first years on screen
When a teenage Megan Fox appeared on Two and a Half Men as Bertha's granddaughter, her beauty was not lost on Charlie and Alan, the leads, or on viewers who were dazzled by the young actress.
In just a few years Megan went from being an unknown girl from Tennessee to an international star thanks to the movie Transformers, and also to being the s-x symbol of Hollywood in the past decade.
But along with fame and success, Megan was typecast and suffered from the misogynist treatment of the industry, which would end up becoming a nightmare.
Her countless scantily clad magazine covers arrived, including Rolling Stone, GQ, Elle and Esquire, as well as her first scandals and blowout statements.
That she did have an affair with a stripper, but she did not consider herself a lesbian; that if the director Michael Bay was like Adolf Hitler (which is why he did not return to the Transformers saga); that she did have the libido of a 15-year-old boy and she was always ready for s-x; that she hated looking at herself in the mirror or that she was sure she had “a mental problem”, without specifying which one.... there was a time in the past decade when Megan kept appearing in magazines and entertainment programs.
Even then, Megan disliked being a s-x symbol. “I'm not comfortable with that. It bothers me”, she assured FHM that, by the way, she gave him the title of “the s-xiest woman in the world”. But shortly after she appeared half-n-ked in the movie Jennifer's Body, a production that went unnoticed at the box office.
And it is that by that time, the admirer of Marilyn Monroe had already been fired from the Transformers saga for her statements against Bay.
She then finished the big blockbuster titles and she only appeared in a few movies that never reached the success of Transformers.
“That was absolutely the low point of my career,” Fox said in an interview with Cosmopolitan UK in 2017. “But without 'that thing,' I wouldn't have learned as quickly as I did. All I had to do was apologize and I refused. She was so self-righteous at 23 that she couldn't see anything outside of the greater good. I really thought she was Joan of Arc."
Megan took the opportunity to strengthen her family life with Brian Austin Green, with whom she had three children.
So Fox faded from the industry for a while, then she was on and off until last year she resurfaced not only because of the Zeroville movie but also because of the rumors surrounding her.
Her love affair with Austin Green ended and she is now happy with rapper Machine Gun Kelly.
Megan's resurgence also served to break the silence about the poor treatment she was given in Hollywood when she was younger, as she was made to feel that she was worth nothing to her as an actress.
“I have endured some genuinely heartbreaking experiences in a ruthlessly misogynistic industry,” she confessed last June on her Instagram account.
Megan herself remembered how she was s-xualized when she was still a teenager. Michael Bay, for example, asked her to dance in a bikini in a waterfall.
“She was about 15 or 16 when she was an extra on Bad Boys III. There are many interviews where I shared the anecdote of her being cast in the scene and the conversations that took place around that.”
In fact, Megan brought up the matter in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel in 2009, but she didn't get the response she was hoping for. The audience and the presenter himself began to laugh as the actress looked quite uncomfortable.
That anecdote with Bay, it seems, would mark the future in Megan's career.
Magazines, tabloids, websites, there was no medium in the United States where she was not referred to as "s-xy", something that would end up weighing on her.
And it is that in an inversely proportional way to her appreciation of her beauty, Megan was the object of terrible criticism for her ability as an actress.
In an interview this year with Refinery 29, Fox regretted not having appreciated her acting ability more, and all because in her industry they always made her feel that she was not worth her as an actress.
"I started to get really angry," she recalled about the feeling she got seeing herself in old movies. "I was like, 'Shit,' why did I live for a decade thinking I was into something when she was actually pretty decent at it? (Acting). That led me to realize that I had been in a self-imposed prison for much of my life."
“At that time, I would have appreciated a little support. However, that built up a lot of strength. Having to go through a challenge like that, the resilience that I have and the ability to survive really negative things without the support of outside forces made me a better person. I do not regret it".
Megan, 34, accepted that for years she was "on a train of absolute toxicity that I was thrown into".
She found it impossible to pass up the negative comments she received for her work.
“Why did I get carried away with something that I knew was not true? Why did I succumb to that?” Fox wondered. “When you tell someone that they're not good at something or that they're deficient, they can absorb that and it can become their reality, and create a life that reflects that negative shit! What did you talk about her?
"Those things affect me deeply," Megan confessed about those crude comments.
Perhaps the actress should have paid more attention to positive comments about her, such as that of the legendary critic Roger Ebert, who in her review of Jennifer's Body of her pointed out:
“Megan Fox is an interesting case. We think of her as a star, but this is actually her first leading role. She fell short of number 18 on Maxim's Hot 100 list of 2007 for acting. Fox is also famous for her many tattoos, but in researching that aspect of her image, I made an encouraging discovery. Anyone can get a butterfly tattoo, but Megan Fox has a tattoo that quotes King Lear: 'We'll laugh at the golden butterflies. How cool is that? Also, so far, there are no boring rumors about alcohol and drugs.
The famous critic also praised Megan's acting work. “Fox did a lot for her career with the two Transformers movies, but this is her first chance to really act, and you know what? She gets over it. She has an obligatory projectile vomiting scene and somehow survives it, she plays the role of her directly and she looks great in a blood-soaked dress with messy hair.”
Today Megan Fox is far from being that girl who felt worthless as an actress and subjected to a misogynistic industry. "Culture is changing and society is changing, and a movie like (her next project of hers) Rogue now has a place to shine and be appreciated." (And why not? Fox's work as an actress, too.)
