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"Because of some things I've said, some jokes I've made, I've got this wild, crazy reputation. Like I'm into sex with knives," she says, laughing at the thought. "People assume that I'm really promiscuous. There's a difference between being very sexual and being promiscuous. I'm not promiscuous. I'm extraordinarily sexual within a monogamous relationship. Nothing's off-limits. But that has nothing to do with experiencing a lot of people. I've only had two boyfriends my whole life."
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The recent breakup with actor Brian Austin Green, whom she'd been dating since she was 18, helps explain the 20 or so paparazzi who now wait outside (and will continue to wait for the next few hours) to see whom she leaves with. She has no problem with attention -- "mass validation" is how she jokingly refers to it -- but this is too much too soon and in danger of overshadowing a career that's just getting started.
Fox moved out to Los Angeles five years ago, when she was 17. She was born in Tennessee, but, after her parents divorced, her mom and new stepdad relocated the family to Port St. Lucie, Fla., where she was enrolled in a strict Christian high school. "They had right-wing conservative teachers teaching Bible class," she says. "They'd tell us how abortion was wrong, how evolution was wrong, how sex was wrong. I hated school." She wanted to act, has for as long as she can remember. So she left school (she later got her degree) and moved out to Los Angeles with her mom. Three months later, she landed a part in "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen" with Lindsay Lohan, then a guest spot on "Two and a Half Men" spent mostly in a bikini, followed by the short-lived Kelly Ripa sitcom "Hope & Faith."
But odds are you'd never heard of Megan Fox until last summer, when she starred as tan-and-toned high school gearhead Mikaela Banes in "Transformers," a role she reprises in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and that mostly entails, as she puts it, "a lot of running and screaming -- you sort of have to let the acting aspect go, because it's just not there. People come to see the effects and the robots and the explosions." Which is not entirely fair. They also come to see Megan Fox in a half shirt bending over a '76 Camaro, an image your 14-year-old cousin has as his screen saver, and not because of the car. "I know I'm seen as a sex object," she says. "I'm just really confident sexually, and I think that sort of oozes out of my pores. It's just there. It's something I don't have to turn on."
Which is obvious when you're watching her eat the barbecue-chicken platter at the Smoke House. She's not licking her fork seductively, or smearing barbecue sauce all over her face, or dripping mashed potatoes down her chest, or doing any of the things she's asked to do time and time again in photo shoots. She's not even using her bare hands. She's simply a 22-year-old girl eating some chicken, so it's really not her fault if watching this makes you feel as if you should be paying for the privilege. "I don't get it," she says. "I don't find food sexy, and I don't see the connection between food and sex." Obviously she hasn't been watching the right people eat.
"If you know how to take control of it, then it can be powerful," she says of being a sex symbol. "But I have no idea how to handle it yet, how to deal with it. I don't want to have to be like a Scarlett Johansson, who I have nothing against. But I don't want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single SAT word I've ever learned to prove, like, 'Take me seriously. I am intelligent. I can speak.' I don't want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I'm not a retard, but I do. And part of it is my own fault."
If that's true, it's because of a few tantalizing stories she's told the press, or maybe those seven artfully placed tattoos, not because she prances around Los Angeles like Kim Kardashian. In fact, Fox is a homebody who prefers to watch hours of Animal Planet rather than go to bars or clubs, and she tries to avoid the Hollywood scene as much as she can. "When I go to a party, I always feel like I'm chum," she says. "Like my agent is just chumming the waters until I'm circled by all these dudes."
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Awards shows, afterparties, any kind of large social gathering: they all make her anxious. Before she walks a red carpet, she gets a nice buzz going (even though she's not much of a drinker), smokes a few cigarettes (even though she quit two years ago), and tries to get quickly in and out as she parries the inevitable come-ons from colleagues hopped up on their own egos. "Actors aren't necessarily the most intelligent guys you're ever gonna come across," she says. "They're so easily manipulated that if you have any sort of control over your own sexuality, they're just f---ed."
Such was the fate of one up-and-coming Irish actor who hit on her as she was smoking a cigarette alone after an awards show. "He was like, 'Cigarettes? Do you have an addictive personality? Well, what else are you addicted to?'" she says. "Like, I'm unaware that he wants me to say, 'Sex. I'm addicted to sex. I just can't get enough. I just really want a daddy. Can you be my daddy?'" She played with him for a bit, gave him a little string, then "cut him off at the knees."
Maybe it's the third herbal tea, but Fox is starting to relax. And with this comes a glimmer of her more unfiltered self, the one she was so worried would get her into trouble: not some cliche wild child, but someone more engaging than that. When she lets her guard down, Fox is gossipy and outspoken. And funny.
Of course, beautiful women always think they're funny, because men laugh at everything they say. Fox could tell a knock-knock joke and every man within earshot would keel over with laughter. But Fox is actually funny. Get her going and she'll deliver a blue monologue that sounds as if it were lifted out of a Judd Apatow stoner flick. Confess you've never seen "High School Musical," for example: "Wait, what?" she says, raising her voice. "OK, well, let me tell you what it's really about. 'High School Musical' is about this group of boys who are all being molested by the basketball coach, who is Zac Efron's dad. It's about them struggling to cope with this molestation. And they have these little girlfriends, who are their beards. Oh, and somehow there's music involved. You have to get stoned and watch it." Fox is funny like your fat friend Phil is funny: dry, dirty, sarcastic, a little bit mean. "People are not used to seeing starlets have a sense of humor, especially an off-center, foul sense of humor," she says. "I think it would be different if I were a guy. Seth Rogen can say whatever he wants and people know it's a joke."
Fox is obsessed with how she's perceived. She won't look at her own press, not because she doesn't care but because she cares too much. Looking at a sexy photo spread she's in or a critical blog post will make her physically ill. "Because I'm young and female, people want me to be like some Disney Channel, supersafe, sex-before-marriage-is-bad, Taylor Swift, I-date-someone-with-a-promise-ring, bulls--- girl." Which would mean watering down the Megan Fox now in full swing at the Smoke House, the unrestrained woman who seems to have a polemicist's position on everything from Superman ("I just think he's a lame superhero. He's not interesting. He's not dark. He's just kind of a d-----bag.") to sex: "I think people are born bisexual and then make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who was bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never want to sleep with a girl who had slept with a man."
She makes this last statement, one she knows will get bolded and underlined and hyperlinked into oblivion, near the end of lunch, after the plates are cleared and the family-dinner crowd is starting to pour in. It's as if she's reached her own internal conclusion about whether she's going to self-censor for them and for all of us. Then she sums it up easily enough: "F--- it."
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It's the choice she must have made at some point yesterday, too.
There were those initial rough spots when Bandit was taking advantage of her, so much so that Michael the guide had to hop off his horse, grab a six-foot length of heavy rope out of his saddlebag, and tether Fox's animal to his own. (At least, he said it was because Bandit was misbehaving.) But that setup wasn't needed for long.
Halfway up, she got the hang of it, comfortable enough to make small talk, about horses, naturally. But this afforded some surprising information, like the fact that Fox knows the name of Gandalf's horse in "The Lord of the Rings," a trilogy she's seen "a billion times" because Fox isn't just a fanboy's wet dream but a fanboy herself. "If I were to get typecast in comic-book movies for the rest of my life, that would be OK." The pervasive rumors that she'll be playing Wonder Woman or inherit Lara Croft's bodysuit from Angelina Jolie are "complete Internet bulls---," but she is currently shooting "Jonah Hex," a bloody Western comic-book adaptation with Josh Brolin. In September, she stars in "Jennifer's Body," a horror parody by Diablo Cody, as the man-devouring zombie captain of a high school flag team.
After "Transformers" came out, Fox passed on a bunch of challenging scripts because she was scared she wasn't good enough or the roles seemed laughably implausible for her. ("Seriously, I'm gonna be playing a mom on a rampage, looking for her lost kid? What a joke. I look like a little kid," she says.) So it's possible that Fox actually will spend her career as the Hot Chick, running and screaming in strategically ripped cheerleading outfits as she battles talking cars and evil cowboys. But that's not likely. After all, she said she was "terrified" of horses, and within an hour into her first ride she was relaxed in the saddle, smiling, talking about coming back and seeing Bandit again.
By the return trek, Fox was confident enough with her horse that Michael agreed to let her trot. She gave Bandit a kick -- commanding, with both feet -- then she let out an excited little scream, and off she went.
