Megan Fox Declined a Career-Defining Role Out of Fear of Jolie Comparisons

Megan Fox seemed to make a breakthrough into the A-list of Hollywood stars after playing the lead female role of Mikaela Banes in the first two of Michael Bay's Transformers movies. But in 2009 she got fired from that film series, after accusing Bay of being a tyrant of a director: "He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he's a nightmare to work for…"

However, she could have recovered her acting career, had she agreed to the role of Lara Croft in a Tomb Raider reboot, which was offered to her around that time.

Or maybe not.

After all, the Tomb Raider reboot plans did not actually go forward until considerably later, eventually resulting in Tomb Raider (2018), which starred Alicia Vikander as Lara. In any case, Megan Fox refused the role. At that time she said that this was due to creative differences with the filmmakers. But later there was a rumor that she simply did not want to be compared with Angelina Jolie, the previous Lara Croft on the big screen.

"The offer has been on the table for Megan for a while but she's reluctantly turned it down," an insider supposedly said, as reported by the New York Daily News. "She's the logical choice to play Lara and she loves the character, but the comparison with Angelina is too much."

Indeed, more than one source had noted that Megan Fox had a sore spot there, and did not want to be seen as "poor man's Angelina Jolie".

Perhaps that was another reason why her career had stalled. While she did not have the misfortune of playing lead roles in as many critically panned and commercially unsuccessful movies, as Jolie, she also never reached the same heights.

After leaving Transformers, Megan Fox mostly played minor roles, mostly in obscure projects. The main exception was the result of her eventual reconciliation with Michael Bay – the role of April O'Neil in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot (Michael Bay produced those movies).