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MEGAN FOX

The amazing

MEGAN FOX When you’re a young woman in Hollywood who, like Megan Fox, has had a kind of sudden, massive fameconferred upon you—a fame that some argue is not necessarily commensurate with your work or even your talent—you have several options: You can move quickly to cash in on your popularity (e.g. make a record, launch a clothing line, do a reality show); you can go out of your way to make penance for your “unearned” success by signing on for serious projects of a certain artistic or social quality that are ultimately neither very artistic nor very social and don’t actually make any money (it’s very important that they don’t make any money—even accidentally); you can freak out, act out, and burn out; you can reject it all and run away and hide; or you can very quickly become hardened by the entire process. In short, while there are obvious perks to immediate, quaking celebrity (e.g. some money, a certain amount of power, free Vitaminwater), the well-worn escape routes are not entirely appealing.

For years, the great revelatory insights about the way pop culture works were that celebrity is about image and that we like to build people up in order to bring them down. But for an actress like Fox, who came of age in the era of reality TV, social media, and second-to-second news cycles, these aspects of celebrity mythmaking (and breaking) are almost elementary. Fox herself has acknowledged as much, offering that some of the more outrageous things she has said in interviews were purely for effect, because—as an aforementioned a young actress in.

Hollywood who has had conferred upon her sudden, massive fame—she knows that she is playing a role, that we live in a culture evermore about images, sound bites, and archetypes, and she has decided that she needs to manipulate the system in order to avoid being consumed by it. It’s somewhat cynical, yes, and true that she is self-invented (as most famous people are), but in Fox’s case, the persona she has created and the way she has seemed to process her own fame hints at an underlying element of self-preservation at work.

Fox says outrageous things. She takes sexy pictures. She looks good on film. you. She just gives you what she thinks you want and keeps the important stuff for herself.

I

’M NOT PRETENTIOUS ENOUGH TO JUST SIT AROUND AND THINK ABOUT HOW I’M A TOOL FOR THE WHOLE HOLLYWOOD MACHINE. BUT IT HAS CROSSED MY MIND. -MEGAN FOX

At the age of 24, Fox has already appeared in two blockbuster movies—Michael Bay’s CGI-robot juggernaut Transformers (2007), and its sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen—which, combined, have grossed more than $1.5billion worldwide. Over the last few years, she has also done a series of other non-Transformers films, including How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008), and the campyDiablo Cody–written thriller Jennifer’s Body—the bulk of which have quickly wilted at the box office. But Fox’s penchant for offering up certain intimate-seeming details of her life in interviews—such as the same-sex romance that she once claimed to have had with a stripper named Nikita, or the location of her boyfriend Brian Austin Green’s name on her body she had tattooed (it’s in her lower swimsuit area)—has provided an entertaining sideshow.

INTERVIEW MEGAN FOX GALIFIANAKIS: So before we begin, I wanted to thank you for allowing me to interview you.

FOX: I mean, it’s probably going to be awkward.

GALIFIANAKIS: Well, no. It definitely will be. My forte is awkwardness. But I don’t want it to be purposely awkward. Let’s make it organically awkward. You know, because we’ve never met before.

So maybe we’ll—I’m already talking too much. . . . Maybe it will be nice and smooth.

FOX: I think it’s possible.

GALIFIANAKIS: Let’s start out with something simple. Where are you? Are you at your house in L.A.?

FOX: No. I was at my house, but we had to go pick up Brian’s son from school. Now I’m on my cell phone. It’s AT&T, so hopefully I won’t drop you. But there’s a good chance that will happen.

GALIFIANAKIS: I’m at a sidewalk café in New York. I’m trying to get recognized.

FOX: I find that it’s easier to disguise yourself when you go to Florida or places like that, because no one is expecting to see a celebrity there. When you throw on a hat and glasses, no one really looks at you twice—because why would you be in Florida? People just assume that if you’re famous, you’re in Hollywood. But in places like New York and L.A., they know that you live there and that you’re trying to disguise yourself, so people are always looking. It’s almost better to not wear a hat and glasses. I’ve actually stopped tinting my windows because the paparazzi look for trucks and cars with supertinted windows. In New York, especially, so much of your life is spent on the streets.

You don’t always want to be driving around in an SUV with a security guard. You want to be able to walk to a restaurant; you want to go and do things.

GALIFIANAKIS: I’ve been here for four hours. No one has recognized me, which is a real bummer.

FOX: [laughs] Yeah.

GALIFIANAKIS: When you walk the red carpet and you see all of these paparazzi animals taking your picture, what do you think? Do you think, “I’m just a tool for the Hollywood system. I’m just here so an executive can buy another Bentley”? Are we just puppets?

FOX: I don’t really resent being on the red carpet as much as I do having to deal with the paparazzi.

That actually makes me angry. The photographers on the red carpet—that’s their job. They’re usually pretty respectful, so I don’t mind. I mean, I’m not pretentious enough to just sit around and think about how I’m a tool for the whole Hollywood machine. But it has crossed my mind.

GALIFIANAKIS: If I were you, I wouldn’t eat a banana in public because of what they might say in a caption.

FOX: Yes, there is that. Every time I leave the house or we go anywhere, there is that paranoia. We always have to watch for specific cars and specific signs that we’re being photographed. The other day, I was having a private conversation on my phone, and I had to step out of my car to go into a Rite Aid. And there were like six photographers in the bushes photographing me the whole time.

It’s weird. It is overwhelming. At times it’s jarring. You never know when someone is videotaping you or trying to capture your image. I see how it makes some people crazy. It’s a strange thing. But I am really lucky. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how any of this has happened. I mean, I don’t sit around and say, “Gosh, I have to do this movie with this person.” I really, honestly, am much more focused on my personal life. I’d really like to have a family at some point. Not that I’m not focused on my career—of course I am. But I’m just at that place where I want to spend some time