Shia LaBeouf
LaBeouf (center) while filming Transformers in Detroit
Birth name	Shia Saide LaBeouf
Born	June 11, 1986 (1986-06-11) (age 21) Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Awards Emmy Awards Outstanding Performer in a Children's Series 2003 Even Stevens

Shia Saide LaBeouf[1] (pronounced SHY-uh luh-BUFF, IPA: [ˈʃaɪə ləˈbʌf][2]; born June 11, 1986) is a Daytime Emmy Award-winning[3] American actor and comedian. After growing up in California, he became known with a starring role in the Disney Channel series Even Stevens. He made the transition to film roles with Holes, a box office success, and has since appeared in several Hollywood films, including Constantine, I, Robot, and The Greatest Game Ever Played. In 2007, LaBeouf starred in Disturbia, Transformers, and Surf's Up, and is slated to appear in 2008's Indiana Jones 4. Several media publications have speculated that LaBeouf, whose screen persona was described by Time magazine as that of the "scrappy kid next door",[4] might become a major film star throughout 2007.[5][6][7][8]

Biography

Childhood

Shia LaBeouf was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Shayna (née Saide), a dancer and ballerina turned visual artist and jewelry designer, and Jeffrey Craig LaBeouf, a Vietnam War veteran who "drifted" from job to job, working as a mime at a circus and as a rodeo clown.[4][9][10][11][3][12] LaBeouf's maternal grandfather, who shared his first name, was a comedian who worked in the Borscht Belt of the Catskill Mountains, and his paternal grandmother was a Beatnik poet and lesbian who associated with Allen Ginsberg.[13][4][14] The name "Shia" is Hebrew for 'gift from God' and the surname "LaBeouf" is a misspelling of "Le Boeuf", the French term for 'the beef'.[13][15] LaBeouf has said that he comes from "five generations of performers" and was "acting when [he] came out of the womb".[12] LaBeouf's father is a Cajun (once described by LaBeouf as a "Ragin' Cajun") and his New York-born mother is Jewish. LaBeouf was raised in the Jewish religion and had a Bar Mitzvah.[12][15][16][17][18][19][20] LaBeouf has described his parents as "hippies", his father as "tough as nails and a different breed of man", and his upbringing as similar to a "hippy lifestyle", stating that his parents were "pretty weird people, but they loved me and I loved them".[12][21] LaBeouf's father used to grow cannabis, and the two smoked marijuana together when LaBeouf was ten.[9][12] LaBeouf has also said that his father was "on drugs" during his childhood, being addicted to heroin and placed in drug rehabilitation for heroin addiction, while LaBeouf's mother was "trying to hold down the fort".[9] His parents eventually divorced, and he had what he has described as a "good childhood", growing up poor with his mother (who worked selling fabrics and brooches) in Echo Park, Los Angeles, California, and attending a predominantly Latino and African-American school.[22][16]

LaBeouf would "create things, story lines and fictitious tales" during his childhood, and practiced stand-up comedy around his neighborhood as an "escape" from a hostile environment.[16] He began performing stand-up and "talking dirty" at comedy clubs (including the The Ice House in Pasadena) at the age of ten (describing his appeal as having "disgustingly dirty" material and a "50-year-old mouth on the 10-year-old kid").[23][22] LaBeouf subsequently found an agent through the Yellow Pages, being taken on after doing his stand-up act for her and pretending to be his own manager, promoting himself in the third person.[16][24]

Career

LaBeouf has said that he initially became an actor because his family was broke, not because he wanted to pursue an acting career.[23] He became well known among young audiences after playing Louis Stevens in the Disney Channel weekly program Even Stevens, a role for which he was cast three months after being signed by his agent.[16] His father, at the time just released from rehab, served as his on-set parent and the two bonded.[25] LaBeouf was awarded a Daytime Emmy Award for the role[12] and has said that he "grew up on that show" and that his childhood was "kind of lost," although his being cast in the show was the "best thing" that has happened to him.[9] During this time period, LaBeouf also appeared in sketch shows on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.[23] In 2003, he appeared in another Disney production, Holes, as Stanley "Caveman" Yelnats IV, opposite Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight and Tim Blake Nelson. While filming Holes, Voight gave LaBeouf a book on acting, and this made LaBeouf realize acting could be more than a job.[4] The film was a moderate box office success. Steven Spielberg was also a fan of Shia in Holes, saying he reminded him of a young Tom Hanks.[3]

That same year, he was heavily featured in the HBO documentary show Project Greenlight, which chronicled the making of the independent film The Battle of Shaker Heights. He had a small role in I, Robot (2004) and appeared in the action-horror film Constantine (2005), opposite Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz, and in the Disney film The Greatest Game Ever Played, playing Francis Ouimet, a real-life golf player from a poor family who won the 1913 U.S. Open Championship.[4] In 2006, LaBeouf co-starred in the ensemble film drama Bobby, which called for him to do his first nude scene when he strips naked while on an LSD trip. LaBeouf has said that he is not the "All-American Disney role model"[3] and chose to appear in some of his film roles in order to "curse as much as possible"[26] and "age [himself] publicly" after his Disney roles, specifying that Disney is "great and all" and a "nurturing place"[23] but "dehabilitating for an actor", being "one constant string of same".[10] He has also said that he enjoyed being a child actor and hated school.[27]

In 2007, LaBeouf starred in Disturbia, a thriller released on April 13. He played a teenager under house arrest who suspects that his neighbor, played by David Morse, is a serial killer. LaBeouf received positive reviews for the role, with the Buffalo News stating that LaBeouf "has grown into an appealing, bright young actor who is able to simultaneously pull off [the character's] anger, remorse and intelligence",[28] Kurt Loder of MTV writing that LaBeouf "gets his star ticket decisively punched",[29] and the San Francisco Chronicle noting that LaBeouf is "fast becoming the best young actor in Hollywood".[30] In comparing the film with Rear Window, The New York Daily News described LaBeouf's appeal as "more John Cusack than Jimmy Stewart".[31] Also in 2007, LaBeouf provided a voice role as Cody Maverick in the animated film Surf's Up and played teenager Sam Witwicky, who becomes involved in the Autobot-Decepticon war on Earth, in Michael Bay's Transformers, released on July 3. LaBeouf has said that he is a fan of The Transformers television series and the 1986 The Transformers: The Movie,[32] and executive producer Steven Spielberg cast him in the role having been impressed by his performance in Holes.[4] Disturbia was the most important film to LaBeouf of his three 2007 films, because it was a "character-driven" role.[16]

In 2007, LaBeouf presented an award at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards on March 31, appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno on April 2, and hosted Saturday Night Live on April 14.[33] He was named 2007's "star of tomorrow" by the ShoWest convention of the National Association of Theater Owners.[34] In April 2007, LaBeouf was cast to appear in Indiana Jones IV, which began filming in June 2007 for a May 22, 2008 release date.[35] Spielberg cast him in the film, impressed by his performance in Transformers. LaBeouf has stated that he would subsequently like to appear in a smaller-scale role.[3] His next films will be Indiana Jones 4 and Eagle Eye, a thriller directed by D. J. Caruso and scheduled to begin filming in the fall of 2007.[36] He has also signed on for two Transformers sequels.[37]

Personal life

LaBeouf attended 32nd Street Visual and Performing Arts Magnet school in Los Angeles (LAUSD)[12] and Alexander Hamilton High School, although he received most of his education from tutors.[22] He bought his own house at the age of eighteen,[7] lives in Burbank, California and remains close to both his parents;[9] his mother now lives nearby in Tujunga, Los Angeles, California and his father in Montana.[4][12][16] LaBeouf was accepted to Yale University, but declined, later remarking that he is "getting the kind of education you don't get at school",[34] although he would like to attend college.[12] LaBeouf is a smoker,[12][38][4] drives a Nissan Maxima[8] and has two bulldogs named Brando and Rex.[7][39] He has said that "sports is so big in my life"[38] and that he is a "film junkie".[40] He enjoys the music of The Shins, CKY, and the hip-hop label Definitive Jux.[23]

LaBeouf has cited actors Dustin Hoffman,[23] Jodie Foster, Jon Voight and John Turturro as inspirations,[7] and has said that he is "very serious" about his career and has made "a calculated effort to stay away from the party scene", believing that "if the industry takes you lightly because you're always partying, then they will take your work lightly as well".[12] Interviewer Jamie Portman of The Vancouver Sun described LaBeouf as seeming to have a "love-hate relationship with the teenage culture that has spawned him".[8]

LaBeouf has said that although he does not devoutly practice Judaism, he has a "personal relationship with God that happens to work within the confines of Judaism".[19]

Filmography

References

External links

• Shia LaBeouf at the Internet Movie Database