Megan Fox Says She Felt Like 'Joan Of Arc' Over 'Hitler' Comments About Michael Bay

Megan Fox is speaking out on her infamous fallout with director Michael Bay, who fired her from Transformers: Dark of the Moon after she made disparaging comments about the director in 2009 and claimed he wanted “to be like Hitler on his sets.” The 31-year-old actress says she likened herself to a martyr at the time.

“That was absolutely the low point of my career,” Fox told Cosmopolitan U.K. in a new interview published Thursday. “But without ‘that thing’ I wouldn’t have learned as quickly as I did. All I had to do was apologize — and I refused. I was so self-righteous at 23, I couldn’t see [that] it was for the greater good. I really thought I was Joan of Arc.”

Asked about Bay by Wonderland Magazine in 2009, Fox described him as a “nightmare to work for” as well as a “tyrant” on set.

“He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad man reputation,” she said at the time. “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it’s endearing to watch him. He’s vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set he’s a tyrant.”

Despite the fallout, Fox said she experienced a period of spiritual growth in the time that followed.

“It hurt me and a lot of other people,” she told Cosmopolitan, for which she covers the February issue. “However, that darkness that descended caused enormous and brisk spiritual growth. Once I realised I [had] brought it on myself, it was an invaluable learning experience, looking back on it.”

Cosmopolitan pointed to GQ’s 2011 oral history of Bay in which he stated that Steven Spielberg advised that he “fire [Fox] right now.” But Bay wasn’t the only person who seemed unnerved by Fox’s derision of the director.

“Criticism is one thing,” Fox’s co-star Shia LaBeouf told GQ. “Then there's public name-calling, which turns into high school bashing. Which you can't do. She started shit-talking our captain.”