Despite the adulation of her fans and the editors of heavy-breathing men’s magazines like Maxim who routinely rank her among the world’s most gorgeous starlets, Megan Fox doesn’t want to get by on looks alone. What she really wants is longevity.

“I was thrown into a movie that made $800 million,” she says, referring to Michael Bay’s Transformers. “That’s responsible for whatever level of success I’ve come to enjoy. It’s nice if people think I’m pretty, but the scary part about it is that I might not be given a chance to be much more than that."

“The scripts I get are mostly for straight-to-DVD movies where the wardrobe is a bikini and not much else. My goal is to still be working in 10 years, and if I don’t break out of that box, I won’t have the career I want.”

To that end, Fox, 23, leaped at the opportunity to star in Jennifer’s Body, the new horror-comedy written by Diablo Cody, the Oscar-winning author of Juno. Fox says she was relieved to play a character of more than one facet—suggesting, not so subtly, her dissatisfaction with being Bay’s glorified pinup girl in the Transformers movies—and embraced her role as a high-school cheerleader turned flesh-hungry banshee.

Fox is no horror fan—she describes herself as a “fraidy cat” who was turned off by the genre after watching The Exorcist when she was 9—but she had no misgivings about Jennifer’s Body.

“I don’t think it’s scary,” she says. “It’s a comedy with horror elements, but it’s not a frightening movie where you’re going to lose sleep over it. That’s not what any of us were going for.”

Fox, who grew up in Tennessee and was raised Pentecostal in a tiny community where “everyone is very, very judgmental,” says she’s spent most of her life and career rebelling against other peoples’ ideas of what’s right. She is not particularly concerned with how she’s portrayed by the media – “If you want a reason to commit suicide, Google yourself on the Internet,” she says – and her responses are often peppered with language unfit for family newspapers.

Yet Fox is also refreshingly articulate and, she says, ready to get her act together. Rather than settling for window-dressing roles in Bay’s testosterone-fueled blockbusters—she recently caused a stir by comparing the director to Hitler, though her role in Transformers 3appears to be safe—she is interested in showcasing her talents and proving she’s more than just a pretty face.

“I’ve never given people any reason to think that I’m a good actress, and that’s my fault,” she says. “I’m looking for things that will push me.

“I just shot a scene opposite Josh Brolin, and I only worked five days on that set, but it almost killed me. I’ve never put so much effort into something in my life, because he’s a brilliant actor, and I just don’t have to skill set to keep up. Things like that are going to force me to grow and move in the direction I want to go.”

To read more about Jennifer's Body, click here.