“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is. His good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2” — a blackboard at Megan Fox’s Florida high school
“Hell yes!”
— a blackboard behind Megan Fox in the poster for “Jennifer’s Body”
MEGAN FOX IS damned hot. And on Friday, the 23-year-old sexpot gets her first title role in “Jennifer’s Body,” a teen-targeted gawk- and gore-fest in which she plays a small-town cheerleader with a smokin’ bod possessed by a demon who devours the awestruck boys in her school.
“She’s evil . . . and not just high-school evil,” is the movie’s tagline. To all the young women at Devil’s Kettle High, clinging to their swivel-headed beaus in the hallway as Jennifer struts past, she is the mean girl from hell.
“Jennifer’s Body” is very much a Diablo Cody film, the in-demand writer’s follow-up to “Juno,” and the screenplay shares much of the same outcast-mischief sensibilities of her hit debut. But between wisecracks and teen-speak, where “Juno” subtly tugged at heartstrings, “Jennifer’s Body” goes in fangs-bared and rips out blood-pumping organs.
Fox’s character lures innocents through seduction, her lithe frame clad in snug white tank-tees, plaid schoolgirl skirts, belly shirts and a cheerleader’s uniform. She even sheds it all for a skinny-dipping scene in which she washes off the blood of a victim. When Jennifer shows up in a tight “Evil Dead” T-shirt, the boys of Devil’s Kettle don’t have a prayer.
For Cody, it was an easy casting choice. “She’s irresistible, a femme fatale,” Cody said of Fox recently while promoting the film in Australia. “We don’t have a lot of those these days. We have a lot of safe little actresses.”
Fox doesn’t do safe. She’s a female lead, as in “lead into temptation.”
“At some point in the process, I realized that every type of boy gets it in this film,” says producer Jason Reitman, who directed “Juno.” “The jock gets it. The sweet nerd gets it. The Goth kid gets it. This may just be Diablo’s revenge on every type of boy she’s ever met.”
Fox, as surrogate manslayer, is happy to do Diablo’s devil’s work. And all the while, she’s perhaps sending her own small-town Florida high school a little “told ya so” glance over a cold shoulder. This is the same wild child who split constrictive Christian school after her freshman year, left it in the rearview mirror, to seek freedom and fame in Hollywood.
“I was always sort of loudmouth and obnoxious,” she recently told David Letterman of her teen years. “I was never really good with authority figures, so I wasn’t good with school.”
And there was no kiss-blowing goodbyes for her catty classmates, either. Fox says that because of her beauty, she was picked on by older girls and sometimes ate lunch hidden in a bathroom stall to avoid being “pelted with ketchup packets.”
“Everyone hated me, and I was a total outcast,” she told CosmoGirl. “I have a very aggressive personality, and girls didn’t like me for that.”
Fox was born in Tennessee, where she first discovered dance and drama, and moved to Florida with her mom and stepdad at the age of 10. In her early teens, she did some modeling, and at 14 landed a role as a rich brat in the Olsen twins’ straight-to-DVD film “Holiday in the Sun.”
That filled her head with ideas of Hollywood. But before dropping out and moving to LA at 16, she spent three years at the private Christian school Morningside Academy in Port St. Lucie, Fla. The curriculum was heavily Bible-centric and only about 500 students were enrolled K-12, or about 30 per grade.
She tried cheerleading and basketball, but was mostly shunned by classmates from seventh through ninth grades. So Fox drifted toward the tomboy route. Her high school boyfriend, Ben Leahy, called her “wild” and said she was “into exploring.”
“Megan was like no other girl at school,” Leahy, now a Florida fireman, told the British paper News of the World. “What I noticed was Megan’s totally badass attitude. She just did not care what anyone thought of her. Most girls are into makeup and shoes. Megan was just a total rebel who loved to hang out with the boys. We used to go fishing and surfing.”
High school can be cruel, even if you’re as attractive as Megan Fox. Once, at a Halloween party, a classmate came dressed in a vampy cat suit, overtly flirting with all the boys. She was dressed up as “Megan Fox.”
“High school was a nightmare,” the actress has said. So, when she read Cody’s script, she found a vehicle for vengeance. When Cody and producer Daniel Dubiecki met Fox for coffee, Dubiecki recalled the actress telling them, “I love this story. I am this girl. I know how to do this. I can kill this role.”
It’s the same self-confidence that told Fox to bail on school and, with her mom in tow, take a shot at the big time. Her undeniable looks (a mix of Irish, French and Native American ancestry) landed her bit parts on TV shows like “What I Like About You,” “Two and a Half Men” and a recurring role in Kelly Ripa’s “Hope & Faith.”
Her first feature film role, rival to Lindsay Lohan in 2004’s “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” got her noticed by director Michael Bay, who later signed her to play Mikaela Banes in the blockbuster “Transformers” series. Bay ensured her sex-symbol status with one widely downloaded image of Fox in a denim skirt, leaning over the open hood of a ’76 Camaro.
One “Transformers” sequel down and at least one to go has given Fox career security — Mom moved home to Florida a few years ago, but not before insisting Megan earn a GED diploma — and kept her in the gossip news. Partly because of her mostly-on, sometimes-off, currently on relationship with Brian Austin Green, of the original “Beverly Hills, 90210.” And partly because of her off-the-cuff comments (see sidebar) about life in the limelight, her eight (known) tattoos, her bisexuality and unwanted comparisons to Angelina Jolie.
To date, recognition for her work has largely come in the form of MTV Awards for “best liplock” and Teen Choice Awards for “female hottie,” or for topping Maxim or FHM magazine’s Hot Lists.
“I’m not going to win an Oscar anytime soon,” Fox told GQ. “I’m not Meryl Streep.”
Still, “Jennifer’s Body” was a chance to act opposite real-live thespians, and not run away from a green screen standing in for 200-foot Decepticons. In the film, visual effects like levitation and bloody projectile vomit do give Fox an unmistakable Satan-spawn quality, but it’s the actress’ understanding of interpersonal advantages, leverages, manipulations and exploitations — the “high school evil” in the tagline — that binds her performance to the script.
“She has this very beautiful, icy façade, which is perfect for our initial perceptions of Jennifer,” said director Karyn Kusama. “What was really impressive was her ability to go to a deeper place and expose not only Jennifer’s overconfidence, outrageousness or vanity, but also her sorrow, fear and regret.”
OK, there’s that. And did we mention the lesbian kiss?
For a half-minute, Fox engages in a heated, horizontal, girl-on-girl liplock with co-star Amanda Seyfried, the “Mamma Mia!” cutie who plays Jennifer’s sheepish, good-girl BFF who knows her friend’s dark secrets.
“You’re going to want to see this film because, first of all, Megan Fox and I make out,” Seyfried joked. “Second of all, Megan Fox is in her underwear and lastly, you’re going to want to see it because . . . Megan Fox and I make out.”
The devil made them do it.
MOUTH OF BABE
Megan Fox may be known for her sex appeal, but it’s her mouth that gets most of the attention. “I definitely have some kind of mental problem, and I haven’t pinpointed what it is,” the shoot-from-the-hip actress recently told the UK’s Wonderland magazine, which features her on the cover this month. Perhaps that “mental problem” is to blame for the following outbursts:
On the battles of the sexes:
“Women hold the power because we have the vaginas,” she told Cosmo. “If you’re in a heterosexual relationship and you’re a female, you win.”
On making a sex tape:
“Ugh. Never,” she told MTV. “The last thing I want to see is what I look like having sex. Because it would take one shot of me not looking good, and then I would not be able to have sex ever again.”
On her fling with a stripper named Nikita:
“I turned into a weird, middle-aged married man,” she told GQ. “I felt like I had this need to save Nikita. I’d get lap dances so I could get to know her. She was sort of a tough badass, but she’d do these beautiful slow dances to Aerosmith ballads.”
On her bisexuality:
“I could see myself in a relationship with a girl,” she told GQ. “Olivia Wilde (of “House”) is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands. She’s mesmerizing. And lately I’ve been obsessed with Jenna Jameson.”
On her inner androgyny:
“If my mom were to tell me that I’d been born with male and female genitalia and that she had to make a choice, I would believe her.”
On racy photos of tween stars:
“I would never issue an apology for my life and for who I am,” she told GQ. “It’s like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry I took a naked, private picture that someone is an a – – hole and sold for money. I’m sorry if someone else is a d – – k.”
mkane@nypost.com