Hollywood spent a decade punishing her for talking back, then the internet decided she'd been right the whole time.
At a glance
- Known for
- *Transformers* franchise, *Jennifer's Body*, tabloid relationship with Machine Gun Kelly
- Before fame
- Ate lunch in the bathroom to avoid being pelted with ketchup packets by bullies
- Off-screen
- Published *Pretty Boys Are Poisonous*, a New York Times bestselling poetry collection
Rise to Fame
The waterfall scene in Bad Boys II put her in front of Michael Bay's camera for the first time: 15 years old, dancing in a bikini because she was too young for the club scene. Four years later, Transformers made her a household name. The studio paid her a reported $100,000 for a film that grossed $709 million. The industry wanted her face on the poster. It didn't want her opinion.
When she compared Michael Bay to Hitler in a 2009 interview, Spielberg reportedly told Bay to fire her. The crew published an open letter calling her 'ungracious, thankless, classless, graceless.' At 23, she refused to apologize. Her career went quiet for years.
In the Spotlight
Jennifer's Body flopped in 2009 because the marketing team used a focus group of young men to sell a feminist horror film. It made $31 million. A decade later, it's a cult classic that LGBTQ+ communities on TikTok and Letterboxd turned into a touchstone. The studio marketed a movie about unwanted sexualization by sexualizing its star. She's noted the irony.
In 2023, she published Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, a poetry collection about abuse and miscarriage that hit the New York Times bestseller list. At the launch, she told the crowd, 'You're never going to cancel me.' The MGK era (blood-drinking, thorn rings, a breakup weeks after announcing a pregnancy) kept the tabloids fed, but the book and the Jennifer's Body reappraisal suggest she's outlasting the gossip cycle.
Side Notes
Bisexual since 2009, and she's said inspiring queer women to come out is one of the things she's most proud of. On the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover in 2023, she disclosed body dysmorphia: 'There's never a point in my life where I loved my body, never, ever.' On Call Her Daddy the following year, she listed every cosmetic procedure she's had except one she's 'gatekeeping.'
Two decades of being reduced to her appearance, and she responds by refusing to be precious about it. Raised Pentecostal, did a three-day ayahuasca ceremony in Costa Rica she described as 'going to hell for eternity,' and came out recommending it over talk therapy.