“I realized that I had been living in a self-imposed prison for so long because I let other people tell me who I was or what I wasn’t.”

Megan Fox was in all of your favorite movies of the early ’00s, and if she wasn’t, then maybe you have bad taste in movies.

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She starred in everything from Transformers to Jennifer’s Body to Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Clearly, the woman has range.

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However, she wasn’t immune from the criticism of the industry, which led her to take a step back from the Hollywood spotlight for nearly a decade.

Megan looking over her shoulder as she poses for a photograph

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In a new interview with InStyle, the actor opened up about how the intense media scrutiny led her to reevaluate her career.

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“I was brought out and stoned and murdered at one point,” she said. In 2009, Megan was fired from the Transformers franchise after comparing director Michael Bay to Adolf Hitler.

“And then suddenly everybody’s like, ‘Wait a second. We shouldn’t have done that. Let’s bring her back.'”

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By that point in her career, the damage was already done. She shared, “I had to armor up so much inside myself and I had to be so tough to have to process this really crazy-heavy price for what I thought was doing the right thing.”

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Megan explained that she made a decision to protect herself, which led to being closed off from the world.

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“I had to adopt a belief system that only I was going to take care of myself and be there for myself because I was constantly going to be outcast or rejected,” she said.

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Only recently has she come to terms with the unfair standards put on her, which helped her enter this brand-new phase of her career and life.

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In an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Megan opened up about being sexualized on the set of Bad Boys II when she was 15 or 16, and later clarified that she was “never preyed upon” by Michael Bay on the set of Transformers.

“I had this incredible breakthrough, and I realized that I had been living in a self-imposed prison for so long because I let other people tell me who I was or what I wasn’t,” she revealed. “I hid because I was hurt.”

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All the drama and hate has only caused her to grow stronger, and she’s using it all as fuel for the next chapter of her life. So expect to see her face back on the big screen a lot more.

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“I won’t lie, I do want to find a Marvel or a DC character that I’ve always wanted to play, and do one of those,” she said.

It may not be the expected next move for the star, but then again, she’s all about breaking people’s expectations these days.

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