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.