Sticking it to the man. Throughout her time in the spotlight, Megan Fox has never been afraid to call out the influence of sexism and misogyny on her career.
In 2009, the Transformers actress, 34, raised eyebrows with fiery comments about her experience working with director Michael Bay on the first two installments of the action films. “‘Be hot.’ I’ve had that note on set before,” she told Wonderland magazine at the time. “I’ll say, ‘Who am I talking to? Where am I supposed to be looking at?’ And he responds, ‘Just be sexy.’ I get mad when people talk to me like that.”
More than a decade later, footage of Fox detailing a particularly uncomfortable audition for Bay resurfaced on social media. During a 2009 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the actress remembered being asked to put on a bikini and high heels to dance under a waterfall in 2003’s Bad Boys II. “At 15, I was in 10th grade,” she said at the time. “That’s sort of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.”
Shortly after the old interview went viral, Fox took to Instagram to address the conversations that had “erupted online” about her “experiences in Hollywood and the subsequent mishandling of this information” at the time. The New Girl actress was fired from Bay’s films after taking aim at his directing style.
“While I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support, I do feel I need to clarify some of the details as they have been lost in the retelling of the events and cast a sinister shadow that doesn’t really, in my opinion, belong,” she wrote in a lengthy Instagram statement on Monday, June 22, before going into detail about her time working with Bay and her previous claims. “When it comes to my direct experiences with Michael, and Steven [Spielberg] for that matter, I was never assaulted or preyed upon in what I felt was a sexual manner.”
Two years earlier, Fox opened up about why she decided to stay silent as some of the most powerful men in Hollywood finally faced consequences for their inappropriate histories amid the #MeToo movement.
“One could assume that I probably have quite a few stories, and I do — I didn’t speak out for many reasons,” she explained to the New York Times. “I just didn’t think based on how I’d been received by people, and by feminists, that I would be a sympathetic victim.”
Scroll down to relive more of Fox’s most critical comments about the way Hollywood treats its female stars.
Since getting her big break as a teenager, Fox has embraced her sexuality without fear — and has spoken out about the dangers of double standards in Hollywood. "I would never issue an apology for my life and for who I am," she told GQ in 2008 as young actresses like Vanessa Hudgens and Miley Cyrus made headlines during a massive nude photo leak. "It's like, 'Oh, I'm sorry I took a naked, private picture that someone is an asshole and sold for money. I'm sorry if someone else is a dick.' No. You shouldn't have to apologize. Someone betrayed Vanessa, but no one's angry at that person. She had to apologize. I hate Disney for making her do that." Shutterstock
After claiming that actors "are the worst assholes to have to hang out with," the Jennifer's Body star went in on the voyeuristic qualities of filmmaking. "Acting is a very weird thing. We get paid to feign attraction and love. When you think about it, we're kind of prostitutes," she told GQ in July 2009. "Other people are paying to watch us kissing someone, touching someone, doing things people in a normal monogamous relationship would never do with anyone who's not their partner. It's really kind of gross." Shutterstock
"It pisses me off when people f--king say that," she told the U.K.'s SciFiNow in 2009 after being asked if her "beauty is something that goes against" her. "That's bulls--t. You wouldn't be working if you weren’t attractive. Hollywood is the most superficial thing you could possibly be a part of and if I weren’t attractive I wouldn’t be working at all." Shutterstock
Fox has a long history of criticizing Transformers director Michael Bay, whom she publicly dragged for his overbearing and misogynist behavior on set. "He's like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So, he's a nightmare to work for," she said in a 2009 interview with Wonderland magazine. "He's vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he's a tyrant. Shia and I almost die when we make a Transformers movie. He has you do some really insane things that insurance would never let you do." Shutterstock
Fox fell victim to a culture of sexism and misogyny in the earliest days of her career, and was able to recognize the ways in which her roles were impacted by the image she was forced into. "If I had been a typical starlet and said all the right things, I wouldn't have escalated to this level. I sit down and do an interview and I talk like a person and that, for some reason, is shocking," she explained to the New York Times in November 2009. "All women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. You're sold, and it's based on sex. That's OK, if you know how to use it." Shutterstock
Though Fox claimed she often felt "completely, hysterically insecure," she's never been interested in being someone's trophy wife. "It's fun when someone intends to put you in his back pocket, but instead, he walks away wounded," she told Cosmopolitan in January 2010. "I make it a mind game so they don't know if I'm hitting on them or mocking them. Male actors drop lines about their private jets, trying to seem powerful, but I don't give a shit. I don't need someone else's power. I'm obtaining my own." Shutterstock
Fox got pregnant with son Bodhi in the midst of filming 2014's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — and claimed she didn't feel like she could ask for a break while filming. "In Hollywood, you don't want to show weakness as a woman because it is such a misogynistic industry. To ever go to work and be like, 'I have debilitating cramps,' you can't do that," she said in a roundtable interview with Mom.com in 2014. "You have to act like you're a superhero in order to be taken seriously or put on an equal playing field as the men. As soon as you like have a woman's body and have women's issues, it's like, 'Oh, you're a hazard for us,' basically. So you just have to pretend that you're a lot stronger than you are a lot of the time." Shutterstock
When the film and TV industry faced its #MeToo reckoning in 2018, Fox was hesitant to come forward with her own stories because early on in her career, her words had been "taken and used against me" in a "really painful" way. "I just didn't think based on how I'd been received by people, and by feminists, that I would be a sympathetic victim," she admitted to the New York Times later that year. "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." Shutterstock
A decade after Jennifer's Body hit theaters, Fox reflected on how being so overtly sexualized in the media made an impact on her mental health. "It wasn't just that movie, it was every day of my life, all the time, with every project I worked on and every producer I worked with. It preceded a breaking point for me," she told Entertainment Tonight in September 2019. "I think I had a genuine psychological breakdown where I wanted just nothing to do. ... I didn't want to be seen in public at all because the fear, and the belief, and the absolute certainty that I was going to be mocked, or spat at, or someone was going to yell at me." Shutterstock
After an old clip of her discussing her misogynistic experiences with Bay resurfaced on Twitter in June 2020, the This Is 40 actress addressed the "mishandling" of the situation in the media. "Please hear me when I thank you for your support," she wrote in a lengthy Instagram statement. "But these specific instances were inconsequential in a long and arduous journey along which I have endured some genuinely harrowing experiences in a ruthlessly misogynistic industry. 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." Shutterstock
The actress explained that she's faced an onslaught of unmerited criticism in her career that she believes is rooted in misogyny. "I'm going through some stuff right now where perceptions are still very misogynistic and sexist and one-sided," Fox told Entertainment Tonight in August 2020. "For whatever reason, people are very trigger happy to call me stupid or call me vain or call me a slut, which is crazy. I was in the same relationship for 15 years, you know? It's bizarre, this image that gets projected onto me that people have just accepted and that's lived for over a decade. And that I never really did anything to earn in the first place." Carlos Tischler/Shutterstock
"There's so much judgment," the New Girl alum said of her relationship with Machine Gun Kelly during a July 2021 InStyle interview. "You want to talk about patriarchy? The fact that he's four years younger than me, and people want to act like I'm dating a younger man. He's 31, and I'm 35. Granted, he's lived like he's 19 his whole life, but he isn't 19. No one would blink twice if George Clooney was dating someone four years younger. ... That's so ridiculous that women are treated that way." Photo by Alex Harper
Fox opened up to Glamour UK about the “ridicule” she endured early in her career after speaking out against the misogyny in Hollywood. “I think that I was ahead of the #MeToo movement by almost a decade,” the Transformers actress said. “I was always speaking out against some of the abusive, misogynistic, patriarchal things that were going on in Hollywood back in 2008 and 2009, way before people were ready to embrace that or tolerate it. And I actually got ridiculed for doing it. I think people just have had time to review that, in retrospect.”The Jennifer's Body star also revealed that she continues to be misunderstood, even post #MeToo era.“I’ve never felt completely included in the feminist community," Fox explained. “And I do still think that it’s tricky in an awful way…whatever I provoke in them is not something that they can digest very well. And so that comes back on me, as they reject me for those reasons. And I just don’t think that I was a very sympathetic victim.” She added: “The regret I have is that my personality is so lost on people, my sense of humor is lost. My intelligence is not acknowledged. And so that is a regret. Sometimes I feel like I just waste my energy, giving myself to people who don’t understand and won’t appreciate [me], but I’ve never had anything where I look back now and think, ‘I really shouldn’t have said that.’ Even the terrible things caused me to do so much work on myself, that I grew exponentially, because of it.” Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock
from Celebrity News – Us Weekly https://ift.tt/tR0cPnx
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