Shia LaBeouf hit superstar status with Transformers, and ever since, his career and personal life
have been an endless roller coaster.
Although he seems to have calmed down, the leading man once made the tabloids daily.
Let's look at the shady side of Shia LaBeouf.
Shia LaBeouf was raised by a family of entertainers.
Dazed wrote that LaBeouf was born in Echo Park, LA, saying,
"[His father was] a mime and a clown, [and] his mother a ballerina-turned-visual-artist
who worked several jobs."
The Transformers star told the mag that his father was in a biker gang, ending up in jail
and often absent from the house.
Speaking to GQ, LaBeouf revealed that when he was around nine years old, his dad disappeared
for several years, leaving his mom to enroll him in the Big Brother program.
After getting paired with a stuntman, LaBeouf would go to film sets, which is where he decided
he wanted to become a famous actor.
By the time he was 11, LaBeouf called an agent out of the Yellow Pages, raving about "the
phenomenal Shia LaBeouf," adding that he was, quote, "big in England."
While the woman knew he was lying, she signed him anyway, and got him his first gig on Even
Stevens.
"You lie for a living, poopbutt."
"We all do."
As a minor on Even Stevens, LaBeouf needed adult supervision on set.
According to GQ, LaBeouf hired his father, and the two stayed in a, quote, "$60 a night
hotel called the Motel Vista for three years."
The actor went on to explain,
"I remember my dad would get in fights with a pimp who had his prostitute next door.
And he was trying to taser the guy because he wouldn't pay one of his prostitutes.
My dad was a hothead back then."
Unfortunately for LaBeouf, it looks like he may have inherited his dad's wild side.
LaBeouf knows his upbringing was rocky.
The star admitted,
"I come from drama.
I come from f---ing joylessness, I come from three people in a f---ing room trying to be
everything to each other.
And we just couldn't do it."
The American Honey star was arrested in 2008 after an early morning car crash that left
LaBeouf with a hand and knee injury.
According to authorities, quote, "his pickup collided with another vehicle" in West Hollywood
causing his car to roll over.
Sgt.
Scott Wolf revealed,
"It was immediately apparent to officers responding on the scene that LaBeouf was intoxicated
and he was subsequently placed under arrest."
Luckily for LaBeouf, he was released with only a misdemeanor DUI.
The previous year, the actor had a drunken altercation with guards at a Walgreens in
Chicago.
Per Today, the celeb was being disruptive in the drugstore, refusing to leave.
After the police got involved, LaBeouf got another misdemeanor for trespassing.
The actor joked on The Late Show with David Letterman after the incident,
"I went nuts.
I got really wasted...I wound up celebrating in Walgreens.”
"Drinking and driving is one thing, but drinking and shopping that's another."
"Just as bad."
"It's just as bad."
"Just as bad."
After the long-awaited Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out starring
LaBeouf as Harrison Ford's son, it wasn't well-received by long-time fans of the series.
Well, Shia decided to be brutally honest with the media, even if it offended the movie's
director, Steven Spielberg.
LaBeouf told the Los Angeles Times,
"I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished.
[Harrison Ford and I] had major discussions.
He wasn't happy with it either.
Look, the movie could have been updated.
There was a reason it wasn't universally accepted."
When the mag asked the actor if he thinks his words will hurt Spielberg, LaBeouf bluntly
said,
"He needs to hear this.
I love him.
I love Steven.
I have a relationship with Steven that supersedes our business work."
So, what was Spielberg's reaction?
Well, besides being cut from a planned 5th installment of the beloved series, LaBeouf
told The Hollywood Reporter that his comments ruined his relationship with the director.
He said,
"He told me there's a time to be a human being and have an opinion, and there's a time to
sell cars.
It brought me freedom, but it also killed my spirits because this was a dude I looked
up to like a sensei."
In October 2011, the Transformers star was involved in a huge bar fight in Vancouver,
as revealed by RadarOnline.
A witness dished the following:
"He got into a confrontation with a couple of people.
He took a few punches to the face.
He was obviously pretty intoxicated."
A few months earlier, TMZ released information that LaBeouf was in another brawl, this time
in Sherman Oaks, California, also getting punched in the face, and ending up in handcuffs.
In 2014, the Lawless actor traveled internationally for yet another duel, this time headbutting
a man in a London pub.
As TMZ revealed, LaBeouf was in, quote, "a pretty rough part of town" in South London.
By 2019, the actor appeared to have his wits about him much more.
LaBeouf admitted to Variety podcast The Big Ticket,
"I'm just smiling a lot more.
I've gotten softer, things have calmed down."
"Just do it!
Don't let your dreams be dreams.
Yesterday, you said tomorrow, so JUST DO IT!"
In 2011, LaBeouf revealed some juicy goss to Details, claiming that he hooked up with
Transformers co-star Megan Fox.
The issue?
She may have had a boyfriend at the time: now-husband, Brian Green.
LaBeouf said with characteristic bluntness,
"Look, you're on the set for six months, with someone who's rooting to be attracted to you,
and you're rooting to be attracted to them."
When asked if Fox was dating Green during her fling with LaBeouf, Shia deflected with,
"I don't know, man.
I don't know.
It was what it was."
The timing was horrible, according to Hollywood Life, which reported that Fox and Green were
separated at the time, but still trying to work things out.
It turns out, Fox wasn't the only starlet with wandering eyes when it came to LaBeouf.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor also admitted to hooking up with his Transformers:
Revenge of the Fallen co-star Isabel Lucas, while she was in a relationship with Adrian
Grenier.
We suppose LaBeouf did warn the world about his infatuations.
In 2008, the celeb told GQ,
"Oh, I've been in love with every woman I've ever worked with."
Can't say he didn't tell us so!
"We're not cheating...not yet…"
In 2014, Shia LaBeouf's The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman costar, Rupert Grint,
revealed to The Guardian that to get into the role of a character high on LSD, LaBeouf
actually took the powerful drug:
"He smashed the place up, got naked and kept seeing this owl.
If anything will make you not do drugs, it's watching that."
If Grint's story comes as a surprise, it's actually not the only time LaBeouf has taken
a role perhaps too seriously.
Speaking with Dazed, the actor admitted to some of the bold things he did for his role
in the drama-action flick, Fury:
"Fury is the most meat I've ever had to chew on...The day after I got the job, I joined
the US National Guard.
I was baptized, accepted Christ in my heart, tattooed my surrender and became a chaplain's
assistant to Captain Yates for the 41st Infantry."
His surreal story goes on:
"I spent a month living on a forward operating base.
Then I linked up with my cast and went to Fort Irwin.
I pulled my tooth out, knifed my face up and spent days watching horses die.
I didn't bathe for four months."
So, did LaBeouf's methods pay off?
Fury was generally well-received.
As for his movie with Grint?
Let's just say, not so much.
In 2013, Shia LaBeouf released his self-directed, self-written short film, Howard Cantour Dot
Com.
The celeb showcased his flick at the Cannes Film Festival, with the reviews being generally
positive.
IndieWire wrote,
"LaBeouf's memorable short is ultimately a surprisingly successful movie on the experience
of watching a movie that should only serve to encourage LaBeouf to further test the directorial
waters."
Unfortunately, Buzzfeed soon broke the news that the movie was almost a direct rip-off
of Justin M. Damiano, a 2007 comic written and drawn by famed artist Daniel Clowes.
The outlet reported:
"Nowhere in the promotion for, or credits of the film does LaBeouf mention the Clowes
comic.”
Eric Reynolds, longtime editor of Clowes' comics and associate publisher at Fantagraphics,
called the film, quote, “shameless theft!”
LaBeouf tweeted out apologies, but those were copied, too.
As Wired reported, the star's tweet on plagiarism actually plagiarized a post on Yahoo!
Answers from years prior.
The actor tweeted again, this time posting a photo that allegedly mocked Clowes and reproduced
even more of his work.
The result?
A cease and desist letter from the novelist's legal team that LaBeouf (of course) shared
as well.
In June 2014, Shia LaBeouf found himself in another incident, and showed quite the resemblance
to a certain character in The Silence of the Lambs.
Page Six originally reported that LaBeouf chased a homeless man around Times Square
in New York City, demanding that a paper McDonald's bag be handed over to him.
A witness recalled,
"He really wanted whatever was in that bag.
He had so much focus...If there were French fries in the bag, maybe he really wanted to
eat them."
A few hours after that incident, the same outlet reported another incident in which
LaBeouf went to the Broadway musical Cabaret, where he, quote, "was slapping people on the
behind and in the back of the head while smoking" inside the theatre.
As cops came to escort the star, he was, quote, "incoherent" and "very agitated," resulting
in his arrest.
The kicker?
The actor was also muzzled with a mask for spitting at officers.
Only a few days later, the actor got in trouble yet again, this time getting himself banned
from The Local Peasant in Sherman Oaks, California after getting up to urinate in the parking
lot behind the restaurant.
In 2014, in order to apologize to the masses for his highly-publicized plagiarism incident,
Shia LaBeouf created a performance art piece called Hashtag I Am Sorry, where he sat in
a room with a paper bag over his head and invited the public to come in one by one.
As writer Ryan Sandoval of Time wrote, when he went inside, he was asked to choose an
item on a table.
He then explained,
"The options: a whip, pliers, a bowl of Hershey kisses, a copy of Daniel Clowes' Death Ray,
a pink ukulele, a bottle of Brut cologne, an Optimus Prime toy (get it?) and a bowl
of about 100 paper slips bearing typed messages."
In an interview with Dazed months later, the actor made this horrifying claim:
"One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped
my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to r--- me...On
top of that my girl was in line to see me...It really hurt her as well, as I guess the news
of it traveled through the line.
When she came in she asked for an explanation, and I couldn't speak, so we both sat with
this unexplained trauma silently."
The scenario raises all kinds of questions regardless of the veracity of LaBeouf's claims.
July 2017 saw Shia LaBeouf completely out of control.
As TMZ reported, the Disturbia star was seen walking in Georgia when he stopped two people
for a cigarette.
When the first person said no, LaBeouf unleashed a verbal attack.
The second person was a police officer.
LaBeouf reportedly sprinted to a nearby hotel to evade arrest, though he was captured in
the lobby.
LaBeouf was then placed in the backseat of the car and was filmed yelling obscenities
at two officers.
As The Telegraph published, LaBeouf got particularly lippy with the black police officer, going
on a racially-pointed rant, saying,
"You've got a president who don't give a s--- about you and you're stuck in a police force
that don't give a f--- about you.
So you want to arrest white people who give a f---, who ask for cigarettes?"
The actor was later bailed out, but the moment left a mark on his career.
A year later, LaBeouf finally spoke out about the incident in an interview with Esquire,
saying,
"What went on in Georgia was mortifying.
White privilege and desperation and disaster...It came from a place of self-centered delusion...It
was me trying to absolve myself of guilt.
I f---ed up."
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