Bad Boy Shia LaBeouf Talks “Inner Serenity” In Details
Shia LaBeouf has really grown into one of Hollywood’s sexy bad boys.
From Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle to the mega Transformers franchise, there seems to be no stopping the proud Jewish American.
Shia LaBeouf is the newest cover boy for the August issue of Details, scruffy facial hair is working, his arms look good, and he’s kind of dirty and sweaty, seems that everything is perfectly in place.
As Details puts it, Shia is “Hollywood’s Last Bad Boy”, and in many ways I agree with them. Shia has the sexy appeal and essence of James Dean. He has a mysterious, yet fun side. He seems to interview quite well and comes off as if he likes to have fun and is a thrill seeker.
Here are the highlights of Shia LaBeouf’s interview in the new Details magazine:
On his reported bar fight: “I’m at a bar, trying to be with my friends,” he begins, still a little peeved several months after the night in question, “and a dude comes up to me and says he wants a photograph, and I say no.” He’s talking about the widely reported incident at Mad Bull’s Tavern in Sherman Oaks in February that ended with one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars chilling on the curb in handcuffs. “Then he comes up with his girlfriend and says it’s for her, and I say, ‘Actually, I’m a little topsy-turvy, man. Can I not?’”
On his lack of diplomacy: “I would like to be George Clooney diplomatic,” the 25-year-old star concedes. “I just don’t have the wherewithal yet or the inner serenity. My bullsh-t meter is tuned very sensitive. The minute it starts kicking up, I get back to truth, and sometimes that involves, you know, ‘I don’t want to take a picture.’ And if that’s the case, am I an a–hole for being honest? Or am I an a–hole for being dishonest, smiling in your picture and I f–king hate being there? Which one is worse? These are the questions I ask myself that George Clooney doesn’t ask.”
How he is, one on one: LaBeouf is good company, garrulous and intense, with an appealing touch of the angry young man about him. He spits constantly when he’s outside (”I have a wet mouth”) and is given to reciting poetry, reading me Charles Bukowski’s “Bluebird” and “B as in Bullsh-t” off his iPhone. He drives an enormous black Silverado pickup and a Thruxton Triumph 900 motorcycle, carries a folding Kershaw knife, and displays a Holden Caulfield—esque allergy to phoniness that makes one wonder how he can stand Hollywood at all.
Fan favorites: “This is not to be comparing myself to DiCaprio, but I remember the hatred for him when every girl I liked wanted to . . .” He pauses. “It’s not extraordinary envy, like Robert Pattinson fan-worship shit, but I do feel animosity from men. They feel like they want to challenge me. ‘I just f–ked up Shia LaBeouf!’ It’s a story you can tell, and I guess you’re cool for it.”
His torrid past: There was that time he rolled his truck while “philandering around,” as he says, with his Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen costar Isabel Lucas (then in a relationship with Entourage’s Adrien Grenier). “It was sort of disastrous,” LaBeouf says. “Neither one of us, I think, were in love. Just sort of experimenting or whatever.” Technically the accident—in which LaBeouf’s car flipped three times, pinning his arm and leaving his hand mangled—was the other driver’s fault. But LaBeouf admits he’d had “three or four” beers a few hours before getting behind the wheel. Then there was the time he pulled his knife on a guy who’d gotten into a traffic beef with his mom, and the well-documented altercation with a security guard in a Chicago Walgreens. The misadventures that didn’t make the papers, he says, are legion—including the day a few years back when he and Megan Fox were at a Taco Bell and the cashier made a rude comment to her and LaBeouf wound up going behind the register and whaling on the guy… LaBeouf proceeds to offer up so many noteworthy yarns—his near blinding when a spike punctured his eye socket while he was filming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (after 20 stitches, he returned to the set and “they shot from the other side,” he says); his ill-fated sushi dinner with Hilary Duff (”probably the worst date either of us has ever had”); his backstage throwdown with Tom Hardy after a joke gone awry (”He never did that roughhouse stuff with me again”)—that I suggest he write a book. He laughs. “Nah, dude. People write books about important sh-t.”
Harrison Ford on Shia‘s criticism of the last Indiana Jones film: “I think I told him he was a f-cking idiot,” the famously reticent star says. “As an actor, I think it’s my obligation to support the film without making a complete ass of myself. Shia is ambitious, attentive, and talented—and he’s learning how to deal with a situation which is very unique and difficult.”
On hooking up with Megan Fox: Asked if he hooked up with Fox, LaBeouf nods affirmatively. “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,” he explains. “I never understood the separation of work and life in that situation. But the time I spent with Megan was our own thing, and I think you can see the chemistry onscreen.” When I inquire about Fox’s status at the time with her longtime boyfriend, Brian Austin Green, LaBeouf replies, “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. . . .”—repeating the phrase exactly 12 times with various intonations, as if trying to get it just right. Finally, he says, “It was what it was.”
What did you think of Shia talking about Megan Fox and her relationship with Brian Austin Green?
Photo courtesy of Details
Hollywood Bad Boy Shia LaBeouf Talks “Inner Serenity” In Details
