Megan Fox can’t seem to give an interview without seeing some tiny nugget of quotage being spun into controversy.
Just look at some of the latest Fox news headlines, which quote the “Transformers” actress as saying she’s removing the tattoo of Marilyn Monroe she has on her right forearm because the late icon is “a negative character” who suffered from “personal disorders and was bipolar.”
“The point I was trying to make is that I feel like this person, her death was surrounded in negativity and she lived a hard and difficult life and I feel like inking something like that on your skin may not be the best thing to do,” Fox told NextMovie exclusively in an interview at the Toronto Film Festival for her upcoming romantic dramedy “Friends With Kids.”
“As I’ve grown I feel like I want very positive things around me and I feel like she suffered, not because I don’t love her, but she clearly suffered as a human being.”
Fox wasn’t even aware that her comments had gone viral until her publicist (one sits in on every interview) brought it up.
“Did I offend the bipolar community or something?,” Fox asks her, before noting that “the way [the article] was worded – it was translated from English to Italian back to English – they’re not even words I would use.”
The publicist explains, “There was a five minute discussion about her love for Marilyn.” But as the nature of the celebrity news cycle goes, it’s the tiniest pull quote (and here one possibly lost in translation) that spreads like wildfire.
Asked if she’s ever asked to “tone it down” in fear of creating scandalous headlines, Fox is defiant: “Not officially. Here’s the thing: They’re with me when I do these interviews, and nothing I say is actually that outrageous. But the way it gets spun, and the narrative that gets put on it by the journalist, makes it salacious.”
Fox refuses to be any less candid in interviews (“You cannot live like that. You cannot live in fear. I would be terrorized”), but she has learned some lessons (“I don’t joke around as much as I used to, in print, because I know for a fact, even when the journalist prints it exactly like I said, people can’t read jokes off of a black and white piece of paper”).
Still, you can sense when she feels she might be being goaded. Ask for her thoughts on her unofficial replacement Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s performance in “Transfomers: Dark of the Moon,” Fox, who hasn’t seen the movie but wants to, responds, “I’ve only heard good things about her, so I have nothing negative to say.”
And then there’s the blunt honesty you just have to respect: “I thought the trailer looked incredible. There’s a part of me that wants to hate the trailer when it comes out, pick it apart and be like, ‘I saw that in the second one.’ But I couldn’t. I was like, Wow. The trailer’s f**king amazing.”