Megan Fox tries to convince herself that she’s an extrovert, but the reality is that after releasing her first book of poetry, about various relationships with men in her life, she’s in need of retreating back home to L.A. to feel like herself again. 

“I think a lot of people are under the impression that I like attention, which is hilarious because I’m so tragically introverted. I wish I loved attention. I would have the best life. I would have so much fun. I have so many opportunities,” Fox says. “I could be doing so many things, but instead, I have crippling anxiety and I never want to leave my house.”

Putting herself out there is counterintuitive to Fox, as surprising as that fact about a celebrity may feel. She recently suffered her very first panic attack brought on by the exposure of the book. Publishing a deeply personal book of poems about past abusive relationships, a recent miscarriage and heartbreak seems like it wouldn’t appeal to Fox. Yet the poems poured out of her.

“I wrote so much more that wasn’t included in the book. There was so much that needed to come out of me. I have so much resentment and so much rage and I just have so many feelings, and so the writing them wasn’t difficult,” she says. “The writing them was fun. The living with them is the difficult part.”

Since its release earlier this month, “Pretty Boys Are Poisonous” has become a New York Times bestseller and found a passionate audience of women, many of whom are discovering Fox’s voice for the first time. Fox has been surprised at the level of emotion she encounters at readings, the way her words have touched people. And despite her discomfort, Fox always knew she had to release these poems. She was told by a therapist that if she continued to hold in the pain it would turn into an illness inside her; the only way was to expel it. 

“I knew that I always had to put it out. I feel like one of my strengths is my spiritual foundation, or the way that I process things and my mindset, and I feel like of all the things I could offer people through the platform that is celebrity, that would be my best offering,” she says. “And so something like this I felt had to go into the public because it’s hopefully going to be much more impactful than a movie I’ve done or anything I’m going to post on f–king Instagram.”

“Pretty Boys Are Poisonous” takes its title from one of the poems inside, after Fox sent several around to friends and that particular name resonated. 

“That one just seemed to sting the most. It was so savage, and that name just seemed to really encapsulate my experience,” she says. “I’ve only ever dated musicians or actors or people who would fall into that pretty boy category, so it just represented my specific experience so well.”

She writes in the introduction to the book that she’s long had a savior/martyr complex, has believed she’s “meant to be a sacrificial lamb” and that the book is both for those who have had similar experiences but also for her “because f–k. I deserve better.” None of the men she writes about are named; canceling someone was never her intention, she says, but the focus also remains on Fox’s words and experiences, rather than the men who have caused her pain. 

Fox shares three sons — Noah, 11; Bodhi, 9, and Journey, 7 — with ex-husband Brian Austin Green, and they will presumably pick up the book one day. She hopes that the lessons her sons take away from its words are echoes of how she is raising them.

“I think because I have sons, it’s very important to me to raise boys who are not like these men that I’ve been with,” she says. “It’s very important for me to raise boys who are able to have a very deep emotional intimacy with their partner. It’s very important to me that they are not liars, that they are able to be fully transparent and honest and respectful and experience at some point in their life, I don’t expect them when they’re 16 to have a sacred love, but I do expect them at some point to get to that place, because I am their first introduction into women and the way that I love them is going to influence the way they are allowed to love others when they go out into a relationship. And so I hope that just through my transparency in the way that I engage with them, in the way that I am demonstrative and affectionate with them, that allows them to love in a really healthy way.”

The book includes two poems about a recent miscarriage she experienced with current partner Machine Gun Kelly, whose real name is Colson Baker.

“That experience was so much harder than I would’ve anticipated it being, and I’ve really analyzed ‘why was that? Why was that so difficult for me?’ Because when I was younger, I had an ectopic pregnancy, I’ve had other things that I’m not going to say because God forbid the world will be in an uproar. But I’ve been through other similar issues, but not with someone who I was so in love with,” she says, referring to Baker.

“And so that love element really made this miscarriage really tragic for me and left me with a lot of grief and a lot of suffering. So I put it into a lot of writing. He’s written about them in his albums as well, he wrote a couple of songs about the miscarriage. So it just felt like something that I could address publicly because it’s been addressed in one way through him, so I have a space to express as well.”

In the poem “The Stepford Wife,” she writes of feeling like a “supporting actor in everyone else’s life while being a featured extra in my own.” When asked if she feels she is now in a place of leading role in her own life, Fox replies that she’s “definitely” not there yet. 

“I have to work on being more selfish, and I’ve always cringed at the word ‘selfish’ because it feels inherently wrong, but it’s wrong to have no self, either. And so I’m in the process of learning to have a healthy boundary and a healthy amount of selfishness.

Part of her journey has been reexamining her relationship to fashion. Fox has had hyper-sexualized labels placed on her — with media outlets branding her “hottest” or “sexiest” — ever since she became famous via “Transformers” in her early 20s. That, coupled with her social anxiety, made her relationship to clothing complicated. 

“I’ve had a weird relationship with fashion because for so long I was rejecting being famous and rejecting whatever this image was that was sort of hung on me, this person I was supposed to be. And so for a long time, I ran from fashion and lived in nothing but sweatpants or workout clothes and never wanted to express myself. My expression was blocked in that way for a long time,” she says. “And then more recently, I rediscovered it, and especially right now, I’m going through all these different phases of like, ‘what do I like and what can I wear that expresses how I’m feeling or what do I want or what I want to say in this moment?’ I’m learning to use fashion in a way that reflects who I am now. But for a long time I didn’t utilize it because I was really suffering with that existential question of, ‘well, who am I?’”

As a teenager, her closet was a mix of Hot Topic and “slutty clothes from Forever 21,” a blend she recognized in her character in “Jennifer’s Body.” 

“I feel like that’s such a good representation of who I am in general. And before she was turned into a demon and she became this Goth icon, [Jennifer] was this poppy, typical cheerleader, Forever 21 girl. She was that typical girl who then there was this other side to her where she became the sort of demon sorceress. And I am both of those things, and I always have been,” Fox says. 

She recently chopped her hair into a bob and dyed it bright red, and is in the midst of covering her arm in a tattoo sleeve. “Eccentric” is how she describes herself, both as a teenager and now. 

“I’m just experimenting now with being in really oversize pieces or being in things that are just not as necessarily revealing. But then there’s a part of me that’s like, ‘no, I need to be naked this day,’” she says. “I don’t have one consistent style. It really does depend on just what I’m feeling in the moment.”

Observing and honoring how she feels is the Megan Fox of today — notably, not one on a film set. Writing, she says, is the outlet that brings her the most creative fulfillment, not following directions on camera. 

“Everybody’s going to get so mad at me for saying this, I don’t care: as an actor, you’re kind of just a puppet. You’re a puppet for the studio or for the producers, the director, the writing, whatever. You’re not really in control of any of the creative processes that are happening. Yes, you can bring your creativity and express something through it within this very limited box. But I think there’s only a handful of actors who are really talented in that way, where they can fully express within the boundaries of what it is to be an actor. And I’m not one of them,” Fox says.

“So I don’t experience it as being a creative release. I need a lot more control to feel creative. I feel creative when I paint or when I draw. I need to be able to be reckless and to not have a bunch of guidelines. And when you’re acting on a set, you are so f–king micromanaged that I cannot consider that a creative release for me. If anything, it’s actually very oppressive for me.”

Asked then if that means she sees herself stepping away from acting in the future, she replies that she’ll go where her instincts take her.

“I am going to take that as it comes. I don’t really have a plan. I guess we’ll see, the universe and the world will show me where I’m needed, and that’s what I’ll do,” she says. “Say a prayer for me.” 

Hair By Dimitris Giannetos

Makeup By Jenna Kristina