tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

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One tMF viewer, who is apparently a Megan Fox fan, once said 'Megan Fox is overrated as a celebrity but not as an actress.' That comment made me think: Is there really such a difference? Can't we judge someone who is a celebrity and an actress, and treat her as one and the same? She's just one person right?

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Here's exactly what our viewer said:

Megan Fox may be overrated as a "celebrity," but she is actually underrated, AS AN ACTRESS. She gets a ridiculously inordinate amount of criticism for her acting because the part of her career that made her famous was a part that focused on how attractive she was, not anything that could actually showcase any acting skills, from ANY actress. That made everyone write off her acting almost instantly when she didn't deserve it.

I guess his point relates to Megan Fox being 'celebrated' for her beauty and the kind of sultry, sexy appeal she flaunts. She is definitely a favorite among men's magazines - FHM (Fox is the magazine's Sexiest women in the world), Maxim (Currently #2 on the Maxim's Yearly 100 list), even GQ can't get enough of her. In this case, she is on their cover not because she did an awesome performance in one of her movies, but because the readers of these magazine demand that she gets the cover and feature a sexy spread of her to boot. But then again, she was also on Moviefone's 25 under 25 Hottest Young Hollywood Stars. The moviefone list is something she shared with Kristen Stewart.

Now the question: Who is overrated between Megan Fox and Kristen Stewart? Should we even compare the two? Before you react (violently or otherwise) let's take a closer look at each actresses' careers and throw in some statistics... More after the jump!
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I'm definitely labelled in the pin-up category. I haven't given people a reason to take my work seriously yet, which is my responsibility. I think the expectation for me, as far as my ability as an actress goes, is very low. I feel like that means I can only ever be an over-achiever when people expect so little from me.

Megan Fox: Her acting career, so far... In this video clip, Megan Fox is both alluring and fearless - she's part of the cast of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and in this scene, she knows what she wants and she's confident that she'll get it!

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Jason Buchanan at All Movie Guide profiles Fox and said:

Over the course of the next few years, Fox became a frequent fixture on television thanks to roles on What I Like About You, Two and a Half Men, and Hope & Faith. In 2004, Fox would torment a fledgling Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, though it was Fox's performance as a human caught in the middle of an epic robot battle that would truly prove her calling card to Hollywood. Cast as the love interest of Shia LaBeouf in Michael Bay's 2007 blockbuster Transformers, Fox turned more than a few heads while fighting for the future of the human race. [ read more ]

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Selected Stats: Take a look at some stats we gathered related to Ms. Fox:
Biggest movie to date: Transformers
Most recently shown movie: Jennifer's Body
Best roles/performances to date: Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
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# of Google searches related to Megan Fox: 33 million
# of IMDb News Desk partners articles on Megan Fox: 3,689 articles and blog posts
Lifetime Box Office gross (as compilled by Box Office Mojo): $740,240,220 (Average: $185,060,055)

Is she overrated? She is overrated for the simple reason that she has garnered so much attention, write-ups, even speculation and gossip for something altogether outside of real acting. She admitted herself that she has not given moviegoers reasons why she should be taken seriously, and it's high time she did something about it, but that is not the case.

What is her agenda then? To remain provocative and buzz-worthy? Or work her way into becoming a serious actress? Says Anne Helen Petersen:

As a non-fan of the Transformers series, I've been rather blasé about Megan Fox. She's apparently beautiful, but she also seemed altogether uninteresting and derivative. As I expressed in my last post, she's a B-movie stock player - a poor man's Angelina Jolie. But she's a top search on Google Images and a constant feature in the paparazzi; she's garnered several magazine covers and, most strikingly, as been attracting loads of press during a European press tour anticipating the release of Transformers 2. [ read more ]

Unless she can come up with a performance that is, at the very least, worthy of some acclaim from both critics and ordinary moviegoers, until then she'll remain overrated in my book.
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I start everything from the same place, with that sense of responsibility. On a bigger movie, you have to be aware that you can only control your aspect of the film. It's nice to be on a smaller movie because you're working with your friends and you feel so close-knit. It's your movie and you can do anything you want, and nobody's going to have anything to say. With a bigger movie, it concerns so many people. It's so much more of a process. But, in terms of what I do personally, it has to be the same, or else I'm just on some big movie, being a liar, and I can't do that.

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Kristen Stewart: In relation to the video clip above, Stewart's short but notable role in Into The Wild confirms that she is a young actress to reckon with. With her desire to play the role, she attended an audition and even sang when asked to. Aside from the Sean Penn movie, she was considerably worthy of acclaim in Yellow Handkerchief as well.

A part of the profile we did for Stewart included the following:

She'll be Isabella Swan to all Twilight fans and will always be Edward Cullen's most beloved. But she has played a number of movie roles worth mentioning, among them as the unassuming Tracy Tatro, a country girl who fell in love with Emile Hirsch in Into the Wild, as the troubled and lonely teenager Martine in The Yellow Handerchief, and as Sam, the older and tomboyish daughter of Patricia Clarkson in The Safety of Objects, her debut film. She also portrayed the young Melina Sordino, ostracized by her schoolmates, alienated by both her mother and father, and is a rape victim who decided not to utter a word in the official Sundance selection, Speak. Says critic Chris Parry on Kristen's performance: As Melinda, Kristen Stewart doesn't just shine, she burns. In a role where most of what she says doesn't come in the form of words, the teen star of Panic Room and Cold Creek Manor shows that she's far more than just a 'teen actress', delivering a flawless performance. Of course it helps that the script is magnificent, the director at the top of her game and that the cast around her is actually made up of teenagers, rather than twenty-something actors dressed down to look like high school kids. [ read more ] Of course, let us not forget her role as Jodie Foster's diabetic daughter Sarah in David Fincher's psychological thriller, Panic Room. It was in this hot-wired thriller that Kristen first received critical acclaim. Her latest as the alluringly sharp-tongued arcade girl, Em Lewin (opposite the talented Jesse Eisenberg) in Adventureland, is one of the first indication of her getting cast in more matured roles. Perhaps her next high-profile role - which maybe her most challenging yet - is playing the legendary Joan Jett in Floria Sigismondi's The Runaways, a coming-of-age biopic about '70s teenage band The Runaways. [ read more ]

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Selected Stats and Info: Take a look at some stats we gathered related to Kristen Stewart:
Biggest movie to date: Twilight
Best roles/performances to date: Panic Room (with Jody Foster), Speak (in the lead role), Yellow Handkerchief (co-starring with Maria Bello, William Hurt and Eddie Redmayne), Into the Wild (co-starring with Emile Hirsch).
Most recently shown movie: Adventureland
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# of Google searches related to Kristen Stewart: 17.2 million
# of IMDb News Desk partners articles on Kristen Stewart: 5,764 articles
Lifetime Box Office gross (as compilled by Box Office Mojo): $437,357,553 (Average: $36,446,463 )

Is she overrated? Someone is overrated if she can't prove herself - in terms of acting, that is. In the case of Kristen, she already did quite a few films where her it was actually performances that were noted by both critics and moviegoers alike. While she remains a popular target of gossip magazines, her work in a number of independent movies is evidence enough that she's serious about exploring all sorts of roles. She was successful in giving the impression that she care little about her public image, but seriously consider acting and how to improve her craft.

Once again, here's Anna Helen Petersen of Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style:

Ultimately, the Stewart star image emerges as a hybrid between the inaccessible - the hipster Stewart - and the wholly accessible - Bella as near-universal point of identification. For in the narrative of Twilight, Bella is crafted as an almost non-personality...besides the fact that she is clumsy and likes cooking dinner for her father, there are very few specifics as to her looks, her hobbies, etc. Indeed, Bella functions as a cipher into which any reader - mom, daughter, whatever - may insert themselves. Hence the widespread Edward fascination: when so many women can identify so closely with the female protagonist, it's no wonder that her love interest becomes the newest heartthrob, inspiring, in several cases, truly fanatic and destructive behavior. Thus: Stewart may be too cool for you, but Bella is you. To my mind, this is a somewhat unique phenomenon, as the extraordinary/ordinary paradox is usually embodied within the star's public image and simply accentuated/underscored by various film roles. Here, one specific film role performs the majority of the labor. Other stars have been subsumed and their futures controlled by a particular role. Yet this phenomenon is most often associated with television personalities - people who play the same character every week, oftentimes for years at a time, thus firmly conflating themselves with a very particular character. In the case of Stewart, however, the phenomenon is rooted in the avid Twilight fandom. In other words, even though only one film has been released - the second Twilight film will be released this Fall; they're currently filming the third - her face is now mapped onto each and every reader's journey through the books. [ read more ]

You can make your own conclusions on the above, but one thing is clear - Stewart has suceeded in transforming herself into someone that fans of the Twilight series can identify - she made a fictional character come to life in the big screen, and while a lot of people want nothing to do with Twilight or Ms. Stewart, no one can discredit this fact.

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What's on your mind? Is Megan Fox overrated or is it Kristen Stewart? What are some of your reactions after reading this article? Let us know what you think!
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