Megan Fox’s Best Movie & TV Roles Include Comedy Gold

Fox’s acting debut was as the antagonist to the Olsen twins in Holiday In The Sun. Set at a resort in the sunny Bahamas, Fox plays Brianna, a spoiled daddy’s girl who always gets what she wants. She sets her sights on resort employee Jordan (Ben Easter), but despite her best attempts at seduction, he’s only interested in Ashley’s Alex. The movie is actually about the twins clearing Jordan’s name after he was wrongfully accused of smuggling stolen artifacts but never mind that complicated, unrealistic plot. Mind the glory days of Olsen twins as actors! Mind Fox!

When Zooey Deschanel took a short hiatus from New Girl after giving birth, the sitcom found the perfect replacement in Fox. A complete contrast to Deschanel’s doe-eyed, dorky character Jess, Fox’s badass, no-nonsense Raegan is a pharma girl who strikes a romance with Nick Miller (Jake Johnson). Her role was so beloved by fans that Fox’s six-episode arc in Season 5 extended into Season 6.

Despite their characters being pitted against each other, Deschanel only had nice things to say about Fox, even revealing she had a hand in her casting. “I was part of the decision,” she said on Watch What Happens Live in 2015," adding, “I’m really happy. She’s beautiful. And [I’m] very excited she’s coming on the show.”

In This is 40, Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd face a major disaster: they’re turning 40. OK, it’s not major at all, but it’s apparently enough to prompt a midlife crisis with their marriage and careers hanging in the balance. In the Judd Apatow-directed film, Fox plays Desi, who works under Mann’s Debbie at her boutique and moonlights as an escort. Fox impresses with her comedic timing and delivery of sharp punchlines in her scenes with Mann. Melissa McCarthy, Jason Segel, and John Lithgow also star in the 2012 comedy.

Another Fox comedy appears in the form of 2011 film Friends With Kids in which platonic pals Jason (Adam Scott) and Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt, who also directs) decide to have a baby while hunting for the loves of their lives. As Jason’s girlfriend Mary Jane, Fox shows comedic restraint, especially during one particularly gross scene where diapers are involved. The star-studded ensemble cast includes Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm, Chris O’Dowd, and Edward Burns.

There’s a war among alien clans — the Autobots and Decepticons — and somehow it’s Shia LaBeouf’s Sam (a high schooler on Earth) caught in the middle of it. In the Michael Bay film, Fox stars as Mikaela, Sam’s classmate and love interest who’s also a mechanic. Together, they help keep the world from total destruction.

Fox had been working with Bay since she was 15 on the set of Bad Boys II, but their professional relationship briefly ended when Fox spoke out about Bay’s “tyrant” manner in an interview with Wonderland in 2009. “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for,” she told the publication. According to Bay’s 2011 interview with GQ, those comments got Fox fired from the franchise, ending her run as Mikaela after the sequel Revenge of the Fallen in 2009.

Fox has since come to terms with the experience, telling InStyle in July, “[Transformers] changed my life.” According to the actor, she “didn’t know it was a 150-million dollar movie,” adding, “I was instantly insanely famous and kind of shell-shocked and traumatized after that cause I was just a kid. I had just turned 19. It’s a wild, wild experience.”

In the 2004 Disney film Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Fox plays the convincingly evil queen bee, Carla Santini. She’s rich, popular, and the reigning champ at Dance, Dance, Revolution — or was until her nemesis, new girl Lola Steppe (Lindsay Lohan), transfers to her school and challenges her. The two later battle it out for another title: the role of Eliza in their school’s rock production of Pygmalion. The film didn’t get the positive ratings typically associated with Lohan’s Disney movies (it only garnered 14% on Rotten Tomatoes), but the fashion and the soundtrack are bound to induce nostalgia.

Bay and Fox patched things up and reunited on two films that brought a kids’ classic to life: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its sequel, Out of the Shadows. She has a lot of screentime as journalist April O’Neil, who’s determined to trade her fluff pieces for investigative work. That’s when she stumbles unto the four carapaced heroes, with whom she apparently shares history.

On Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in 2018, Fox was asked about the decision to work with Bay again. “I was a huge fan of [TMNT],” she said about wanting to do the movie. Of their reconciliation, Fox said she reached out to Bay first and that they’re on good terms now. “We’re BFFs,” she joked, sharing she even gets invited to his Christmas parties.

Before Fox blew up on big franchises, she first joined the cast of Hope & Faith, the ABC family sitcom with Kelly Ripa and Faith Ford. When the free-spirited Faith (Ripa) loses her acting job, she moves in with her by-the-book sister’s family of five in suburban Ohio, disrupting their lives with her silly antics. She develops an especially close relationship with her eldest niece, Sydney (Fox), imparting her school-ditching tactics and dating wisdom.

Fox replaced Nicole Paggi as Sydney in 2004 and stayed on for two seasons. Her Sydney was an edgier, cooler take on the popular girl in high school. The show is where she met her ex-husband Brian Austin Green, and the two were married for 10 years before finalizing their divorce in 2019.

In Jennifer’s Body, Fox is a maneater, literally. The popular cheerleader Jennifer Chuck who befriends Needy, Amanda Seyfried, is actually a succubus who preys on men. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, the horror-comedy film was dubbed a feminist movie. Though it bombed initially, it has since gained a cult following, especially for exploring complicated, sometimes sexual, dynamics between friends.

“That movie is my favorite movie I’ve ever done by far,” Fox told InStyle in July, adding that she is grateful to be a “bi icon.” She shared that fans reached out to her saying, “‘You had a lot to do with me understanding that I was gay or that I was bisexual.’” She added, “That is by far the most moving thing that I have experienced in my life to be a part of something that helped people figure that out or deal with that.”