'Transformers' Star Shia LaBeouf: Megan Fox 'Never Comfortable' Being Sexy for Michael Bay

"She had a hard time accepting it," he says - but her replacement Rosie Huntington-Whiteley "can get down with Mike’s way of working."

7:47 AM PDT 6/3/2011 by THR Staff

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Transformers: Dark of the Moon star Shia LaBeouf says the set has changed for the better since Megan Fox was replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

The reason?

Fox, he says, could never adapt to director Michael Bay's take on sexuality.

"Megan developed this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women,” LaBeouf tells the Los Angeles times. “Mike films women in a way that appeals to a 16-year-old sexuality. It’s summer. It’s Michael’s style. And I think [Fox] never got comfortable with it. This is a girl who was taken from complete obscurity and placed in a sex-driven role in front of the whole world and told she was the sexiest woman in America. And she had a hard time accepting it. When Mike would ask her to do specific things, there was no time for fluffy talk. We’re on the run. And the one thing Mike lacks is tact. There’s no time for, ‘I would like you to just arch your back 70 degrees.’”

(Fox, who played Mikaela in the first two films, has compared Bay to Nazis and Napoleon.)

But Huntington-Whiteley?

“Rosie comes with this Victoria’s Secret background, and she’s comfortable with it, so she can get down with Mike’s way of working and it makes the whole set vibe very different,” LaBeouf said.

LaBeouf ways his character is coddled more with Huntington-Whiteley in the film, which hits theaters June 29.

“Sam’s sort of frustrated,” LaBeouf says. “He has no purpose in life. When he was with the Autobots, he had purpose. He was needed. But he’s got this very supportive girl [Huntington-Whitley's character Carly Miller] who’s having him go to these job interviews and trying to nurture him, get him back on his feet. It’s a different female energy than he experienced with Mikaela, who was a very cold biker chick. This woman’s more of a maternal, loving type. Sam wants a domestic, eggs-in-the-morning kind of a thing.”