LOS ANGELES — Megan Fox has built her reputation as a sex symbol willing to speak her mind, but she appears poised for a change.
"I have to pull back a little bit now," the 23-year-old actress reveals in an interview with New York Times Magazine. "I do live in a glass box. And I am on display for men to pay to look at me. And that bothers me. I don't want to live that character."
That character is one Fox has played ever since she shot to fame in 2007's Transformers. Men love her, but women apparently have a different opinion, having avoided her latest film, Jennifer's Body.
"Girls think I'm a slut, and I've been in the same relationship since I was 18," says Fox, who is currently on-again with Brian Austin Green. "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."
While she believes women have turned against her, Fox contends that the sexual person she portrays in the media goes with the hand she was dealt.
"If I had been a typical starlet and said all the right things, I wouldn't have escalated to this level," she explains. "I sit down and do an interview and I talk like a person and that, for some reason, is shocking. All women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. You're sold, and it's based on sex. That's O.K., if you know how to use it."
"It's been a crazy year," she continues. "I've learned that being a celebrity is like being a sacrificial lamb. At some point, no matter how high the pedestal that they put you on, they're going to tear you down. And I created a character as an offering for the sacrifice. I'm not willing to give my true self up. It's a testament to my real personality that I would go so far as to make up another personality to give to the world. The reality is, I'm hidden amongst all the insanity. Nobody can find me."
Fox says you certainly won't "find" her if you're picking up the latest copy of Maxim.
"When I sit down to talk to men's magazines, there's a certain character that I play," she confesses. "She's not fully fleshed out — she doesn't have her own name — but she shows up to do men's-magazine interviews. There's something so ridiculous about always being in your underwear in those magazines, and you know the interview is going to run opposite those pictures. So, there's a character that talks to all of them."
Fox maybe wishes that she was playing a character when she compared Transformers director Michael Bay to Hitler and said he was "a nightmare to work for" during an interview over the summer. Several of the film's crew members later ripped Fox's work ethic and talent in an anonymous letter, something she's still hurt by to this day.
"I was waiting for someone to defend me, to say, 'That's not accurate,' but nobody did," she says. "I think it's because I'm a girl. They left me out there to be bludgeoned to death."
In her defense, Fox explains that she is simply playing the character everyone wants to see.
"You have to be put in a box in this industry so they can sell you," she says. "They need to get hits on their blogs or sell their magazines. So everyone is something. And if I'm not a party girl, which I'm not, I then have to be the outrageous personality."
Also see: Megan Fox Pictures
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