Tara Reid Reflects on Dating Tom Brady, Calls the Former NFL Star 'Cocky'

Speaking about the romance in a new interview with Bustle, Reid said the pair, who coupled up in early 2000 ahead of Reid's engagement to Carson Daly, would see each other "on and off."

"It was nothing serious, but it was fun," the American Pie alum added of her relationship with the young Patriots quarterback. "We'd go to beer places and have fun and dance. He was cool."

Adding of how Brady's changed since skyrocketing to sports superstardom, "He's all skinny now. He's so serious. He used to laugh. When I watch his interviews, he's so cocky now."

Calling it a "different time," Reid also reflected on the state of fame when she was coming up in Hollywood, at time where she said she was virtually able to go out and do "whatever" she wanted.

"... then bam. It just changed so fast," Reid said. Things shifted right around the time Britney Spears was emerging as a Hollywood darling, with Reid recalling a party the "Sometimes" singer hosted at the Chateau Marmont.

It felt like "a thousand photographers. I couldn't even get in the car. It was insane," she said before thinking back to another night at the Whisky Bar at the Sunset Marquis.

"Every celebrity went there. You couldn't even walk out of that place without getting those cameras. They would follow me in my cars everywhere. They'll get in the front of your car, the back of your car — you couldn't even move," she continued. "It got to the point where I remember hearing Reese Witherspoon calling 911: 'I'm stuck, I can't leave, there's paparazzi, they're jumping on the car!'"

Touching on tabloid culture and how things have changed since paparazzi would do anything they could to get those often invasive photos, Reid wondered why she was such a big target.

"I never had a sex tape," Reid said of negative press she'd often receive from celeb gossip bloggers like Perez Hilton. "People got in trouble, been in jail — I've never got a speeding ticket in my life. Why am I being punished?"

She added of the press, "They kind of made me a cartoon character. Everything I did was wrong. And then the casting, the studios — they didn't want any bad reputation."

While she did have her fair share of wild moments in Hollywood, partying and even checking herself into rehab, the reputation she received in Hollywood, as she said, probably cost her "a lot" of jobs, while some of her male compatriots were going on to get major gigs.

"The punishment didn't fit the crime," Reid said before tearing up. "For them to just take me out of the game for a while?"

These days, she's taking control back of her career and her narrative, producing her own movie through her Hi Happy Films vehicle.

"I got people on the phone that I never got on the phone before," she shared. "Bigger agents, managers — because I was going to cast their clients. Do you know what I mean? The tables turned."

Wrapping up a stint on Special Forces and Hollywood Heist, a low budget film with Nick Cannon and Alec Baldwin, Reid is hopeful 2024 will bring about her return to Hollywood, emotionally telling the outlet, "I wish that people could see me for who I really am. And I would really love to come back to Hollywood and be accepted again."