When you make fun of your costar for being "extremely uncomfortable" while smooching a woman, when you talk openly about what a "lunatic" you are, when you claim "Office Space" is your favorite movie but quite possibly have never seen it — when you do all of this, as Megan Fox has, you open yourself up for some criticism. And goodness knows Megan has taken a ton of media hits since "Jennifer's Body" tanked at the box office last September.
But has a leading Hollywood lady ever received condemnation so disproportionate to what she really deserves? Is Megan really so maddeningly terrible? Not at all, says Mickey Rourke, who went so far as to call her the finest actress he's ever encountered.
"People say bad stuff about her and how she can't act, but they only say that because she's beautiful," the actor told the New York Daily News. "She's the most talented actress I've worked with. When she cries in a scene, I get emotional."
Mickey's past Oscar-winning co-stars Marisa Tomei, Kim Basinger and Faye Dunaway should not take it personally, of course. He's starring with Megan in "Passion Play," an upcoming romance about a troubled trumpet player and a winged angel, and so has a reason to tout her thespian chops.
And you know what? Maybe it's time to give the Megan backlash a rest. Is she honest to a fault? Possibly. Does she say provocative things to journalists simply for the sake of saying provocative things? Perhaps. But "Jennifer's Body" was not nearly as awful as people suggest, and I for one look forward to the 23-year-old actress' future big screen career.
So too do I wish other Hollywood starlets would speak publicly with such vulnerable candor, as when she spoke to MTV News about the traumas of high school ("I still am intimidated by cliques, by groups of teenage girls that approach me. I always feel like I'm gonna get pelted with something or something's going amiss") and her insecurity about her body (That's the last thing I want to see — what I look like having sex. It would take one shot of me not looking good, and I would not be able to have sex ever again, because I would always just see myself looking like a hippo having sex.")
What do you think of Mickey's comments?
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