Megan Fox is a fox. And not just in the way you might think if you’ve seen her in a tiny bikini in a men’s magazine or leaning over the hood of a ’76 Camaro in “Transformers.” Yes, Fox is beautiful and often scantily clad, but dozens of beautiful girls arrive in Hollywood every day who are more than happy to pose nearly naked. Unlike them, Fox has a quality that sets her apart: Fox is sly. Canny. A devoted student of stardom, past and present, she knows how to provide her own color commentary — a narrative to go with the underwear. In the age of the 24-hour news cycle and hungry blogs, Fox has supplied a seemingly endless stream of tantalizing quotes. She has detailed her fling with a stripper named Nikita; compared Michael Bay, the director of “Transformers,” to Hitler; and revealed that she has her boyfriend’s name tattooed “next to my pie.” Fox has a provocative way of describing any situation: her girl-on-girl kiss in her latest film, “Jennifer’s Body,” is “like crazy kiddie porn”; Disney’s “High School Musical” is about pedophilia (if you watch it, as she did, after getting high); and the reigning heartthrob Robert Pattinson is too young and too pretty to be sexually compelling. “I would eat Robert Pattinson,” she said.
None of these comments were accidental. All of them made the Hollywood press, especially on the Internet, swoon. Some of Fox’s comments may have been fiction (sadly, there was no Nikita), but most seemed startlingly honest and entirely quotable. Fox, who is 23, understood instinctively that noise plus naked equals celebrity. And after having appeared only in “Transformers” I and II, in which the true stars were giant robots, she created a rebellious, frankly sexual persona and talked her way into the limelight. The only problem is, having come so far so fast, how do you stay this year’s girl when the year is almost over?
This question seemed to be on Fox’s mind when I met her one morning in late September at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan. She lives in Los Angeles but was in New York to host “Saturday Night Live,” and she answered the door of her hotel room dressed in black leggings, a low-cut tank top under a gray, loose-fitting long cardigan and large, rectangular glasses, which gave her a kind of “sexy librarian” look that vividly contrasted with her pinup image. Fox is small and narrow, with a tiny waist, and she wears her long, thick dark brown hair parted in the middle, which gives her a vaguely Indian quality. Her most striking feature is her eyes — they’re bright blue and catlike, and they look half-closed even when they’re wide-open. For all her raunchy talk, Fox is surprisingly dainty and ladylike. She took ballet for much of her childhood, and she has a natural stillness and grace. She’s not warm or particularly friendly and doesn’t seem at all interested in small talk. Instead, she’s self-contained and a bit wary. She will answer any question, but she resists true dialogue. With Fox, it’s not a conversation but a presentation.
Fox arranged herself in an armchair behind a round table covered with plates of eggs, melon, potatoes and toast that had been ordered by her publicist from room service. The television, which was mounted near the ceiling, was tuned to “The View,” and Fox made no effort to lower the sound. She watches a lot of television, hours and hours of reality-based shows, from “Jon & Kate Plus Eight” to “Ghost Hunters” to “Say Yes to the Dress,” which is about women searching for the perfect wedding gown. “I don’t know why I love it, but I do,” Fox said now, as she picked at a plate of steamed spinach. “It’s really confusing to me, so I study it. They all cry when they find the dress. I don’t understand why they all cry.”
Fox said this as if she were contemplating an alien species. Having conquered the male audience, she was now trying to figure out what women want. Four days earlier, “Jennifer’s Body” opened, and despite Fox’s many salacious interviews and alluring photos, the movie performed poorly, winding up in fifth place at the box office. “Jennifer’s Body,” which was written by Diablo Cody (who won an Oscar for her original screenplay for “Juno”) and directed by Karyn Kusama, was aimed at women. Fox plays a sexually sophisticated high-school girl transformed into a zombie demon that must feed on humans to survive. She satisfies this desire by first seducing and then eating men. Not surprisingly, and despite the heavily publicized 64-second lesbian makeout scene, men did not buy many tickets. Neither did women, who tend to prefer movies that feature more approachable, less vixenish actresses, like Sandra Bullock or Jennifer Aniston.
“People expected ‘Jennifer’s Body’ to make so much money,” Fox said flatly. “But I was doubtful. The movie is about a man-eating, cannibalistic lesbian cheerleader, and that pretty much eliminates middle America. It’s obviously a girl-power movie, but it’s also about how scary girls are. Girls can be a nightmare.” Fox paused and stared up at the ladies on “The View.” “ ‘Jennifer’s Body’ wasn’t rated PG-13 like ‘Twilight,’ ” she continued. “It was a hard R, and kids couldn’t get in. So they bought a ticket to another movie and snuck in.” She smiled. “If I was to have a message, it would be to be a different kind of role model to girls. With ‘Jennifer’s Body,’ I want to say, It’s O.K. to be different from how you’re supposed to be. I worry that’s totally lost.”
In the last month, Fox and her team — her agent, Chuck James, and her publicists, Leslie Sloane Zelnick and Dominique Appel — have grown increasingly nervous about her media image. The lack of success of “Jennifer’s Body” highlighted their concern: the outrageousness that made Fox an instant star was not attracting a paying audience, especially among females. They were hoping that hosting “S.N.L.” and some recent appearances on talk shows on which she seemed demure might help to change the dialogue about Fox from the out-of-control sex bomb to the Fox they know, who is a homebody with a longtime boyfriend (the actor Brian Austin Green, who is 36) and a fondness for spending Saturday nights at Red Lobster, where she likes the cheese biscuits. That, they maintain, is the girl that girls should see. But Fox is less certain. “Women tear each other apart,” she told me now. “Girls think I’m a slut, 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 whore or a dumb whore. The instinct among girls is to attack the jugular.”
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