If it were up to Megan Fox, she’d leave the red-carpet life for good.
“It’s never something that I really enjoyed, so I’ve always tried to stay away from it as much as possible,” the actress tells the Daily News.
“When you’re promoting a movie, you have to be out on the red carpet. That’s just part of it. But that kind of [glamour and exposure] was never a choice.”
Fox — who jokes that she “fell into the action-movie scene by accident” — has been sucking it up to promote “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” in theaters Friday.
In the reboot of the 1980s-’90s franchise — which originated as a comic book, then became an animated series and a 1990 feature film — Fox plays reporter April O’Neil, the human pal of, and press contact for, a quartet of superhero warriors who just happen to be giant shelled reptiles.
Fox has a lot of respect for strong women like her character, who’s there for the action as the Ninja Turtles fight the evil Shredder and his Foot Clan.
“I think [fearlessness] is something you’re born with,” she says. “Maybe not in all cases, but a lot of famous people that have made it have to be [strong].”
Fox has relied on her strength ever since she hit it big in Michael Bay’s first “Transformers” movie, in 2007. She was declared the hot young mainstream actress of the moment — comparisons to Angelina Jolie were inevitable — but Fox, 28, says that at time she was ascending, she wasn’t really thinking much about what it all meant.
“I was just trying to figure out who I was then,” she says. “I’ve never been somebody who gets on the Internet and reads about myself. It’s so damaging to the psyche and to your emotional well-being. I was never that aware of the Hollywood hierarchy.”
“There have been so many salacious, ridiculous stories about me in the past. They were all asinine.”
That may be one reason Fox — who says she “definitely” doesn’t consider herself sensitive — has this advice for young actresses: “If you have an insecurity issue or if you seek validation through the opinions of others, this industry is not for you. It will tear you to pieces, and you will not survive.”
She raves, however, about “Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence, not just for her talent and versatility, but also for being a fellow “fearless female” in showbiz. “I definitely think she’s ruling the world right now.”
That’s fine with Fox, who says she herself is now “a homebody,” limiting work to “one or two projects a year.” Any more and she’d miss the time it takes away from her family, including her and Green’s sons Noah, who turns 2 next month, and Bodhi, born in February. (She also has a 12-year-old stepson from Green’s relationship with actress Vanessa Marcil.)
Even now, she says, she doesn’t live an online life.
“You don’t have to be quite so interactive,” Fox says. “I mean, Twitter, there’s pressure to post an update several times a day — I’m much more private than that. I was on Twitter for five days, and I posted on my Facebook, and I was overwhelmed by it.”
The gossip mill and Internet have tested her in other ways.
In 2009, while engaged to the man she’s now married to — “Beverly Hills, 90210” alum Brian Austin Green — she denied rumors she was dating her “Transformers” co-star Shia LaBeouf. (LaBeouf later said he and Fox “hooked up” while making their two “Transformers” movies.)
After 2009’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” stories swirled about a feud Fox was having with Bay. Now, though, he’s a co-producer on “Turtles,” and she says they’ve made amends.
And in 2010, when she joked to a red-carpet reporter that she was “a man,” some gossipmongers ran with that claim on the Web.
“I made a joke, something like I ‘felt like a man,’ ” Fox explains. “For some reason, people … thought that I was serious, so it was taken seriously!
“I don’t understand why people don’t have common sense and can’t identify sarcasm or, you know, some kind of self-deprecating humor,” she adds. “But people don’t expect that coming from me, for some reason.
“There have been so many salacious, ridiculous stories about me in the past. They were all asinine.”
That may be one reason Fox — who says she “definitely” doesn’t consider herself sensitive — has this advice for young actresses: “If you have an insecurity issue or if you seek validation through the opinions of others, this industry is not for you. It will tear you to pieces, and you will not survive.”
She raves, however, about “Hunger Games” star Jennifer Lawrence, not just for her talent and versatility, but also for being a fellow “fearless female” in showbiz. “I definitely think she’s ruling the world right now.”
That’s fine with Fox, who says she herself is now “a homebody,” limiting work to “one or two projects a year.” Any more and she’d miss the time it takes away from her family, including her and Green’s sons Noah, who turns 2 next month, and Bodhi, born in February. (She also has a 12-year-old stepson from Green’s relationship with actress Vanessa Marcil.)
“Working 16 to 18 hours a day [on a film] makes it really hard to spend time with your children,” Fox says. “The process has been difficult for me emotionally.”
Sleepless nights, she added, compound the problem.
“People always tell you when you’re pregnant, ‘Sleep as much as you can now, because once your children are born, you’ll never sleep again!’ And you’re like ‘Yeah, OK,’ ” Fox laughs. “But it’s true! You don’t ever sleep the same.”
One guy she says she’s not concerned about is LaBeouf, despite several public meltdowns — the latest being an incident in June, when he was ejected from a Broadway production of “Cabaret” for disruptive behavior. That led to charges of trespassing, disorderly conduct and harassment.
“I’m not worried about Shia,” says Fox. “I love my Shia. He’s perfectly fine. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of years, but I don’t worry about him. He’s a brilliant kid, talented and funny. … There’s no reason to worry.”
Perhaps she was thinking of LaBeouf’s role in an Indiana Jones adventure when she’s asked what would be her fantasy non-Hollywood lifestyle, far from the flashbulbs of the red carpet.
“I would be archaeologist,” Fox says, “on the search for the Ark of the Covenant.”
Source: NY Daily News
