Megan Fox became famous as the beautiful girl who teamed up with Shia LaBeouf to fight the robots from outer space in the first two Transformers movies, but she's stuck around in the public eye partly because she's a great interview, willing to talk about most anything in a frank and funny way. Now, here at the Toronto Film Festival she's getting a chance to show off that sense of humor onscreen in Friends With Kids, the new comedy in which she shares the screen with the likes of Adam Scott, Jennifer Westfeldt, and half the cast of Bridesmaids-- Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph and Chris O'Dowd.
I asked Fox about what she learned working with so many talented comedians on the set, and how her 20-something dancer character Mary Jane-- who finds herself in a relationship with Adam Scott's older character-- reflected where she is in her own life. But in typical candid Megan Fox fashion, we wound up talking about a lot of other stuff, including her soon-to-be-removed Marilyn Monroe tattoo, her relationship with husband Brian Austin Greene, and how time works on Cybertron. Check out the interview below, and keep an eye out for Friends With Kids-- it's in the process of getting a distributor here at TIFF and will likely be in theaters within a few months.
What's the experience shooting in New York? Was this your first time shooting on location in Central Park?
I think so. I lived in New York for almost two years when I was on television [Hope & Faith]. Yeah, I'd never filmed there. It was really beautiful. It was freezing cold-- it didn't look like it.
Is there chaos when you're shooting on the street, or can you shoot under the radar?
It was so cold and so early that no one was really there yet. But in the city your trailer is right on the street, so usually when you get out there's a lot of paparazzi.
That happens here at all these hotels in Toronto during the festival.
None of us are that interesting. I would never stand outside for even five minutes to meet any famous person.
You're the youngest person in the central cast of Friends With Kids. That must happen to you a lot when you start acting as a teenager, and I wonder how you get adjusted to that.
I don't know that I've ever not been the youngest. Shia is a month younger than I am. We were together fighting the universe.
The robots were ancient, I guess.
And they just rebuild themselves. So they've been around forever. There are no years on Cybertron.
I'm going to check that against the Transformers canon.
It's probably wrong. [Laughs] Wait, what was the original question?
About being the youngest in the cast.
My sister is 12 years older than me, and I always grew up around her and her friends and got used to being the youngest. My husband [Brian Austin Green] is 13 years older than me. It's not like a hunted out an older man, it just happened that way, we just connected. But yeah, I've never really worked with an actor or actress younger than me.
Do you think the age difference isn't a big deal?
When I was first with Brian it was harder for people to deal with because I was 18, and that sounds very young and it is very young. He was 31, and that is a huge difference. But now I think it sounds less so, 25 and 38. It doesn't sound so crazy because people expect that at 25 you're at least more of a formed human.
Do you subscribe to the age is just a number idea?
I think it depends on the person completely. There are kids my age-- I'm not a kid, anymore, oh god-- there are people my age who are very mature and responsible and have their priorities straight, and then there are others who are my exact age who are completely spiritually lost, their lives are upside down. It depends on each person.
And in Friends With Kids Mary Jane is so not ready for kids, and that comes up so often at this mid-20s age.
Right. I have friends in their mid to late 20s that don't have kids that feel the pressure to have kids. As women we feel the pressure of your biological clock, and you have an expiration date. It's a terrible pressure that women are faced with. And when do you fit it in, and when is the right time?
The tattoo on your arm [of Marilyn Monroe's face] is in the movie, and I don't think I had seen it before on screen.
It's in the movie? We didn't cover it with makeup? I wonder if that was a mistake. Maybe she let me have it because of the character. I didn't even think about that.
Has that tattoo been tricky for you?
Just the logistics of having a call time that's three hours earlier than everyone els's because you have to cover your tattoos. That's enough to make you want to remove them.
So is that the reason to get rid of it?
That's not the first reason. I went through a phase where I just wanted to get rid of anything that I felt had any negativity surrounding it at all. There's been so much debate about did she commit suicide, was she murdered, there's so much negativity around her. It's not like I needed to have it on my body. It's not that I don't love her--I got it in the first place because everyone loves Marilyn. But she suffered a lot.
And that's another part of growing up too.
Yeah, the things you love as a child as a teenager, and you grow out of them. You're not as connected to them the older you get. That's something I'm experiencing with my tattoos and other parts of my life.
You're funny in person, but you haven't been in a lot of comedies. This movie is stacked with comic talent-- did you learn anything from them?
The people I find the most interesting aside from Adam were Chris O'Dowd and Maya. They play a couple in the movie, and I loved watching them, because even when the camera wasn't on them and it wasn't their moment, they would have their own dialogue going on as husband and wife that was hysterical. I found that really interesting. There was never a point where they would sit and watch because they weren't on camera. They were always interacting and making each other laugh and making their characters stay alive through the whole process. It's not that they're competitive, but they like to make each other laugh. That's the prize. They do that all day long, and you get to sit there in the middle of it and watch.
Does that make you want to do comedies, or change the way that you go about picking roles?
The environment, the on-set environment on comedies is light and fun, and I feel like it's a healthy one as far as this job is concerned. I'm much more open-minded on comedy projects because of that.
(Image via DFree / Shutterstock.com
