Megan Fox Can Do Whatever She Wants

Let's spend a minute, shall we, extolling the virtues of the non-manufactured movie star. The celebrity who refuses to let his or her publicist craft tidy little soundbites for public consumption that always contain the words "grateful," or "fortunate," or "team effort."

Let us praise the actors and actresses who don't seem to care one whit what reporters or media types think or blog about them; and who figure the fans of their movies will either like them as people or they won't. These are the people who seem the most authentic out of all the shiny happy Hollywood confections that are trotted out on our screens on a daily basis. They get irritated, and show it. They are perfectly comfortable with themselves (as much as anyone can be) and they don't hold back with the sardonic or the personal information just because their current film appeals to tweens. They are rarely apologetic, but typically VERY compelling on screen--probably because they let their insides show on their outsides already.

I'm talking about people like Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox from the Transformers movies. Shia is well known for running off at the mouth and offering up information that might make a less squeamish person urp in their Wheaties. I am not squeamish, though, and therefore find it amusing and, yes, strange, that he finds his mother the sexiest woman alive, or that he watched his parents have sex and smoke weed and engage in all-around bohemian activities. Megan Fox has already admitted to being bisexual and entertaining a serious crush on a stripper; she's claimed to essentially be a man in a girl's body; and she's talked about the fact that she loves smoking pot and doesn't get why everyone's so effing bent out of shape about it. Katherine Heigl from Grey's Anatomy is notoriously plain-spoken, and might have tanked her movie career because of that fact. But in a business that is molded and injected with artifice as a rule, even abrasive bluntness is an applause-worthy quality. Bloggers, media critics, and the like have called this sort of behavior in stars inappropriate, diarrhea of the mouth, yadda yadda; and I don't agree. Those critics seem to be trying to get actors to all fit in the same neat little box, where they act well and look good and try to avoid any pesky human foibles. Boo to that.

Now, this is where I make a distinction. There are actors who say what they want to, and never come off as inapporpriate. Take Tom Hanks. That guy doesn't give pat answers to anything, doesn't come off as generic or practiced--he comes off as the single nicest guy on the frickin' planet because he probably IS that guy. On the flip side, actors like Sean Penn say whatever the hell they want, too, but very easily project "I'm an asshole" with every answer because he's defensive any time anyone asks him anything, even if it's about ice cream or puppies.

Encourage spontaneity in our celebrities. Encourage spontaneity in yourself. Don't think about every single thing you say before you say it. Unless it's really racist or something. That's just rude.

Originally written 6.09