The wild rise of Shia LaBeouf, Hollywood’s most combustible star
Hollywood today is a sanitised and frankly boring place, devoid of the hellraisers of yore. Those who still yearn for excitement and danger from their movie stars, then, will silently breathe a prayer of thanks for the continuing antics of Shia LaBeouf, who seems to be on a one-man mission to create controversy and chaos everywhere he goes. His most recent escapade has occurred in Edinburgh, where he is currently staying while his wife, the actress Mia Goth, films her role in Guillermo del Toro’s new version of Frankenstein.
Once, LaBeouf might have been expected to take on a major part in a high-profile picture like this himself, but his years of derring-do and trouble have meant that his career is now largely in the doldrums. He has now been caught on film not exactly shying away from a confrontation with a group of men in the Scottish capital last Sunday.
The footage shows LaBeouf, clearly heavily refreshed and belligerent, squaring up to the apparent strangers and shouting “Let’s go, I’m right here, mother------”, then being restrained by other men before the fight can kick off. The irony is that, when LaBeouf visited another pub earlier that day, he was said to be “nothing but nice”. A few hours later, a fired-up actor was a rather different proposition.
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If this had been, say, Tom Hiddleston or Ryan Reynolds in such a situation, then we would be talking about career-threatening, maybe even career-ending consequences. Yet in the case of the volatile and mercurial LaBeouf, most people who read this news will shrug and put it down to another example of “Shia being Shia”. This is especially depressing since, when on form, LaBeouf is of the most electrifying and charismatic actors of his generation.
He is living proof that the old studio system, which carefully protected its stars from adverse publicity at all costs, would have benefited a talent as damaged yet fascinating as his. These days, anyone with an iPhone can capture his latest outburst or absurdity, and put it out there for all perpetuity.
Often, in these situations – as with Robert Downey Jr, for instance – there is a troubled childhood to explain an actor’s difficulties and residual unhappiness. Yet in the case of LaBeouf, he had a normal, reasonably happy middle-class upbringing in Los Angeles, albeit not without its eccentricities; when his parents divorced, LaBeouf was corralled into accompanying his father to AA meetings, when he wasn’t dressed up as a clown in order to sell hotdogs to his Latin American neighbours.
The young LaBeouf was a born performer from a young age, however, and began a career as a child stand-up comedian, telling inappropriately priapic jokes about erections while a ten-year-old. He found some early success as an actor in the Disney Channel show Even Stevens, which he credited with giving him both exposure and stability; he claimed that “I grew up on that show”…it was the best thing that happened to me”.
He won a Daytime Emmy award for the show and came to the attention of Hollywood, being cast in showy roles in the Keanu Reeves supernatural thriller Constantine and the teen-themed literary adaptation Holes. He also demonstrated greater range and versatility in the 2006 drama A Guide To Recognising Your Saints in which – perhaps fatefully – he was cast as a younger version of Robert Downey Jr.
Yet amidst the thespian kudos, he was already demonstrating a potential for trouble; in 2005, he got into a heated disagreement with a neighbour after the neighbour allegedly insulted his mother, which resulted in LaBeouf pulling a knife on him and being beaten by the neighbour and his friends.
LaBeouf made the transition from respected young actor to movie star around 2007, when he came to the attention of Steven Spielberg. The director saw LaBeouf’s obvious talent and cast him in several breakthrough roles in films he either produced or directed, including the lead in Michael Bay’s Transformers, the suspense thriller Disturbia and in the fourth Indiana Jones picture, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
His casting in the latter film as Mutt Williams, Jones’s son, was widely believed to be an audition for him to take on the role in a spin-off franchise if and when Harrison Ford tired of the whip and fedora. The actor had Hollywood at his feet, and he was mindful of the opportunities that he enjoyed, telling Entertainment Weekly that avoiding trouble with “pretty simple when you think about it.” He lived by a simple maxim: “just don’t f--- up”.
Unfortunately, f---ing up was precisely what LaBeouf proceeded to do over the next few years. Although the roles kept on coming, not least the lead in the Wall Street sequel and lucrative appearances in the Transformers sequels, he now became as famous for his offscreen antics as anything that he was doing in the cinema, He was arrested in 2007 for trespassing after refusing to leave a pharmacy, and was arrested again for drunk driving in West Hollywood, during which he caused a car crash.
He also all but disowned the Indiana Jones film, saying in 2010 that he had “dropped the ball” with his performance. Although he rushed to placate Spielberg, saying “He needs to hear this. I love him. I love Steven. I have a relationship with Steven that supersedes our business work”, the director was unimpressed, and issued the curt statement that LaBeouf had “killed my spirits”. Unsurprisingly, the two have not worked again since.
From around 2015 onwards, LaBeouf seemed to lose interest in being a mainstream actor. Amidst a series of embarrassing and revelations – a relationship with his Transformers co-star Megan Fox while she was “on a break” from her marriage, a public apology after it transpired that his first self-released short film ripped off the work of the artist and writer Daniel Clowes – he seemed to trail chaos everywhere he went. Although he was still capable of excellent work, as in the Brad Pitt Second World War thriller Fury (he prepared for the role by not bathing for four months and shaving his tooth down to below the gumline), he was a tabloid target by now, and obliged with a series of arrests, public outrages and high-profile social media posts.
He turned up to the premiere of Lars von Trier’s film Nymphomaniac wearing a paper bag on his head, with the words “I am not famous any more” written on it. He flirted with performance art, much to people’s outrage and horror and was ejected from Cabaret at the theatre after spending the afternoon drinking and chasing a homeless man around Times Square.
In an uncharacteristically good-natured 2014 appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show, in which Kimmel said “you seem to have gone crazy since when I last saw you”, he told a long, raucous anecdote that made the whole shebang sound hilarious, rather than sordid. He cared, he could have reinvented himself as a latter-day Oliver Reed or Robert Mitchum, a likable hellraiser whose undeniable talent overcame his obvious issues with alcohol and drugs.
Today, LaBeouf is less an actor and more a performance artist of varying degrees of success. In 2014 he debuted a new performance art piece entitled “#IAMSORRY at LA’S Cohen Gallery. According to reports, visitors to the gallery were asked to choose either a whip, a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses, a pair of pliers, a bottle of Brut cologne, a bottle of Jack Daniels or a bowl of folded-up notes – each bearing Twitter comments about LaBeouf. They were then led into a room where “LaBeouf sits at a small wooden table, the now-famous brown paper bag placed over his head.” Occasionally, LeBeouf removed the bag and silently cried.
One escapade, in which he watched all his films back to back while live-streaming his reactions, duly went viral for his horrified and disgusted response to that modern-day classic Transformers 3. And this has continued to the present day; after being confirmed into the Catholic church on New Year’s Eve, he announced that he is considering becoming a deacon, with a spokesman for the Capuchin Franciscan friars saying: “His decision to fully enter the church is a testament to his sincere desire to grow in his relationship with God and live out the Gospel values.”
This, unfortunately, is at odds with his recently reported antics, but even the most saintly can see their halos slip occasionally. However, LaBeouf seems so fully dedicated to his hellraising and eccentric behaviour that even the most forgiving chapter of the Catholic church would struggle to accommodate him.
There was a brief, ill-fated return to mainstream cinema when LaBeouf was cast in Olivia Wilde’s thriller Don’t Worry, Darling, only to be fired for his “combative energy” and replaced by Harry Styles. LaBeouf denied this and leaked correspondence with Wilde that suggested that he quit rather than being pushed.
He finishes Transformers 3, shakes his head and leaves the cinema for an hour. #allmymovies pic.twitter.com/Uh7WP4DUMv
— Luke Bailey (@imbadatlife) November 11, 2015
In any case, it all contributed to the sense of him as no longer being a mainstream actor. Long before the age of 40, LaBeouf seemed to have lost all interest in anything other than outrage and controversy. He was once regarded as the next Leonardo DiCaprio; at the rate he is going, he’s more likely to turn into the next Brad Renfro.
Inevitably, the maelstrom of madness also affects LaBeouf’s personal life. As a self-respecting Hollywood star, he has had a string of high-profile girlfriends including Goth, Carey Mulligan and Margaret Qualley. Yet even here, there has been much tumult. Between 2018 and 2019, he was in a relationship with the British musician FKA Twigs, who later accused him of battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress.
As a result of this, his agents dropped him and although he denies “each and every allegation” that Twigs made against him, he later issued an apology. “I hurt that woman,” he said, not naming Twigs. “And in the process of doing that, I hurt many other people, and many other people before that woman. I was a pleasure-seeking, selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate, fearful human being.”
Yet even amidst the chaos, there is still hope. He returns to cinema screens later this month with an apparently scene-stealing supporting role in Francis Ford Coppola’s eagerly anticipated Megalopolis, which suggests that LaBeouf is still interested in working with major directors. His work with Lars von Trier, in particular, showed what he was capable of if he was stretched by a like-minded filmmaker.
And he has demonstrated the ability to laugh at himself, too. In 2012, the comedian Rob Cantor recorded a song about the actor that imagined him as a demented cannibal. It went viral, and, in 2014, an extended version was recorded, complete with a music video in which LaBeouf, being the epitome of a good sport, cameoed at the end, in a conscious homage to Citizen Kane.
It is impossible to know what will happen to Shia LaBeouf. Few would have thought that Downey Jr would one day become one of the wealthiest and most popular star of his generation – and an Oscar winner, to boot – when he was undergoing similar personal trauma. Yet many kept the faith with Downey Jr because he was, and is, a rare and unique talent. Many would suggest that the wildly unpredictable and self-destructive LaBeouf could yet be rescued and resume a fascinating later career as a character actor par excellence. Or, alternatively, he could become a very unusual and belligerent deacon. Whatever happens, it won’t be boring.
