Actress Megan Denise Fox was born on May 16, 1986 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She began training as an actress at age five, and began appearing in local dance performances and plays. She continued training when she moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, where she eventually graduated from St. Lucie West Centennial High School. She began her career as a model, kicking off after winning awards at the 1999 American Modeling and Talent Convention in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Fox made her acting debut in 2001, when she appeared in the direct-to-video film Holiday Sun. This was followed by a role in the Swedish-American soap opera Ocean Ave., which aired in 2002 and was beset with bad reviews from the very start. From there, she took numerous guest roles on television, appearing in shows such as What I Like About You, Two and a Half Men and The Help, before finally taking a recurring role in the comedy series Hope & Faith. She took over the role of Sydney Shanowski, the somewhat ditzy oldest daughter of Hope (Faith Ford) and Charley Shanowski (Ted McGinley), from a departing Nicole Paggi.
Fox also received considerable success in the 2004 film Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, where she played popular girl Carla Santini opposite Lindsay Lohan. Her biggest success, however, came in 2007, when she was cast as pretty grease monkey Mikaela Banes in the live action thriller Transformers. As the love interest of the lead Sam Witwicki (Shia LaBeouf), she attracted considerable attention, and led to heightened interest in her. She has since appeared in numerous magazine shoots, and was named by FHM as the Sexiest Woman in the World in its 2008 list.
Fox’s most recent film is How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, a romantic comedy starring Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst; she plays a budding Hollywood starlet who becomes the object of Sidney Young’s (Pegg) lust. She has also signed up for two Transformers sequels; the first, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is set for a 2009 release.