Megan Fox through the years
The headline on the Dec. 31, 2001, Palm Beach Post article says “Port St. Lucie Teen Shoots for Stardom .”
She’s certainly accomplished that.

Eight years later, Megan Fox is everywhere. She’s a Hollywood and Internet sensation, with her tart comments, short skirts, pouty lips and Marilyn Monroe arm tattoo. Paparazzi, blog junkies and drooly adolescents just can’t get enough of her.

She’s come a long way from being a basketball cheerleader at Morningside Academy, attending St. Lucie West Centennial High, working at a snack bar and listening to ‘N Sync and Britney Spears.

Fox was named the hottest of the hotties in 2009 by FHM magazine. Her photos are guaranteed hit-generators for any Web site. Her online ubiquity is such that one blogger created a “No Megan Fox Day” earlier this year.

It didn’t work.

Expect another tsunami of Megan-mania to crest today with Jennifer’s Body, a horror film in which Fox plays a killer high school cheerleader. Literally. Written by Oscar-winning scribe Diablo Cody (Juno), the film is Fox’s first true starring role since she catapulted to fame as the auto shop girl/love interest to Shia LaBeouf in the first two Transformers movies.

Jennifer’s Body has been getting mixed reviews from critics at the Toronto International Film Festival, where a leggy Fox has turned out in a series of provocative outfits and impressed some with her ability to crack wise about her sexpot image and Hollywood’s marketing machine.

“She’s not the typical sort of ingratiating young starlet that’s here to please,” Cody told journalists at the film festival. “She’s just a very interesting, intimidating, edgy person. She’s amazing. She’s really independent.”

But it remains to be seen if she can carry a movie without the help of big giant robot toys.

She can certainly hold her own online. Google Megan Fox and you can read that she and Transformers director Michael Bay don’t see eye-to-eye, that she’s catfighting with Angelina Jolie and that she would rather kiss girls, as she does in Jennifer’s Body, than horny movie-star guys.

And that’s just what she’s talking about this week.

Fox’s life has certainly changed a lot from when The Post first interviewed her in 2001. At the time, the 15-year-old high school sophomore had just finished her first big movie — Holiday in the Sun, a direct-to-video flick starring the Olsen twins.

But she always knew who she was going to be.

“Ever since I was 3 years old, I’ve wanted to be an actress,” she said. “I really never wanted to be or do anything else.”

Her inspiration was Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.

“For a year after I saw that movie, Mom had to call me Dorothy. I had the red shoes. I wore the pigtails. I knew all her lines. Everything. I guess that’s what started it.”

In 2001, Fox could still rightly describe herself as a typical teen. She and her sister and mother were spotted at the Mall at Wellington Green on the day after Thanksgiving, all sporting holiday antlers and trying to
spread cheer.

But even then, Fox gave hints that everybody didn’t treat her kindly.

“I think a lot of times people — especially girls my age — when they hear I (act), they think I’m going to be self-absorbed, conceited, and I’m not that way at all. I’m not rude. I’m not a scary person. I am actually pretty nice.”

She still brings up those points years later, telling journalists at the Toronto International Film Festival: “There were actually evil girls in my high school — and I went to a Christian high school, go figure. But girls can be really cruel and really awful … I was really shy.”

Before doing the film with the Olsen twins, Fox did 10 stage productions, including Godspell in 2000 at Stuart’s Lyric Theatre. She modeled for magazines and appeared in public service announcements. She was a finalist for a role in the CBS daytime soap opera, As the World Turns.

In 2003, she got a small role in Bad Boys II, which was filmed partially in Delray Beach. It was directed by Michael Bay, who would give her instant stardom in the Transformers movies beginning in 2007.
That’s when Megan Fox turned from cute teenager to sex symbol. Suddenly, she was in and out of a relationship with TV actor Brian Austin Green and there were stories of flirtations with women and hanging out at strip clubs.

Her mother, Darlene Tonachio, of Vero Beach, told The Post that it felt “totally surreal” to have spawned an actress often described as the next Angelina Jolie.

“As a mom, I look at Megan as my baby girl,” she said. “It’s hard to believe that other people look at her (as a sex object).”

Looking back to 2001, though, it’s almost as though Fox could see it all coming. Even then, she talked like a seasoned pro.

“You really have to be tough in this business because there’s a lot of rejection,” she said. “You just have to stay positive, not take things too seriously and keep trying.”

This story used material from earlier reports in The Palm Beach Post by Sharon Wernlund and Jose Lambiet.

FOX NEWS

Megan’s latest mouthiness

Megan vs. Michael Bay: First, she trashed the Transformers director and his franchise for giving her little real acting to do. Then, she said working for Bay was like working for Hitler. Last week, three crew members wrote an online letter claiming that Fox is ‘a thankless, classless, graceless, and shall we say unfriendly b****.’ Stay tuned.

Megan vs. Angelina Jolie: When it comes to comparisons, Fox has reportedly said that she looks ‘way better’ than Jolie.

Megan vs. nudity: ‘I can’t ever imagine myself doing nudity in a film. It lives forever, especially now, with the Internet. Literally all I have left are my private parts, and I don’t want to share them with the world. I’d like to keep them private. That’s why they’re called that!’

MEGAN’S NEXT ROLE

She hosts the season premiere of Saturday Night Live on Sept. 26.