Shia LaBeouf: VOILA! His Shapes and Sounds

YOU'LL have to be a Transformers fanatic to understand the many shapes and sounds of Shia LaBeouf. Sure, his name is hard to pronounce. And the spelling makes journalists, bloggers, and fans fumble and double-check Wikipedia. But there is no denying that Shia LaBeouf is the hottest Hollywood denizen du jour. His latest project, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen has, not surprisingly, made a major killing at box offices worldwide.

The sweet part of the deal is that twenty-something Shia (pronounced to sound like hiya!) breaks away from the common muscle-bound action hero mold. He is more John Cusack than Sly Stallone, which makes him more endearing and approachable to his many adoring female fans. Even more fascinating is that he was able to hold his own against his costars: The brilliantly assembled Optimus Prime and the rest of the shape-changing crew.

The Boy Within

Even as wimpy Sam Witwicky, Shia holds his own over his gigantic costars, and even against super hot Megan Fox. That is because as a hero, Shia is not all hunk, but all heart. Unlike other stars of this generation, Shia doesn’t take himself too seriously. He once quipped on the Late Show with David Letterman that Shia is a Hebrew word for ‘gift from God,’ while LaBeouf is a corruption of the French term for beef or ox, hence his name means ‘Praise God for the beef.’

These are the kind of cracks one would expect from an actor who got his first taste of the limelight at age 2, selling hotdogs with his dad at a park, wearing a clown suit. “It was a hustle. We’d walk around the neighborhood in full clown regalia,” he recalls in an interview with Parade magazine. “My embarrassment factor didn’t exist. I had fun, because I knew that in the middle of a performance my parents couldn’t fight. So, for sure, every day, there had to be some peaceful time for us, or we weren’t going to make it through the week financially,” he says. “I’m still doing the same hustle now. The only change is that, instead of my dad selling hotdogs from the cart, it’s Steven Spielberg selling the hotdogs.” He describes his childhood as happy, even though his father was hooked on heroine, and his mother had to make ends meet selling fabrics and brooches, hippie-style, at Echo Park in Los Angeles.  

He moved on to doing stand-up comedy at around 10 years old. His jokes, he admits, were racy. “I was billed as the 10-year-old with a 50-year-old mouth!” By 12 years old, he began appearing in guest roles at television shows such as Caroline in the City (1988), and X-files, Touched By an Angel, Jesse, and Suddenly Susan a year later. He says that he initially wanted to be an actor because he wanted to help support his family, not because he seriously wanted to pursue an acting career. He did not miss out on an education, though, and was even accepted to Yale University after his high school graduation. 

 A Star Breaks Through

Shia broke though mainstream show biz by landing the lead role in the Disney production Even Stevens. There, he regaled teen and tween audiences with his comic timing from 2000 to 2003. The show ended after 65 episodes with a successful TV movie, also aired on the Disney channel.

Other Disney-related work followed, including the movie Holes, where he got to work with Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. It was also with this movie that he got the nod from director Steven Spielberg who says Shia reminded him of a young Tom Hanks. This led to a role on Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle (he played the orphan that the Angels had to protect).  

Other films that he made a mark on include the Emilio Estevez-directed Bobby (where he has his first nude scene), Constantine with Keanu Reeves, and I-Robot starring Will Smith. He also played Indiana Jones’ son in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Then, to prove his artistic flexibility, Shia even tried his hand at directing, with a children’s film titled Let’s Love Hate.

              But his biggest breakthrough, undoubtedly, is via the Michael Bay-helmed Transformers franchise, where he was cast by an impressed Steven Spielberg. Because of this high-tech thriller, his hard-to-pronounce name is now on every movie buff’s lips. 

Fast Facts

• For Transformers, LaBeouf performed his own stunts, including clinging to a giant statue as Megatron approaches, with only a safety harness for protection. He says, “There are action stars who wouldn’t have been so dumb.”  

• He briefly dated Rihanna, but comments that ‘the spark was not there.’

• He figured in a car accident right before filming Revenge of the Fallen, prompting changes in the script to accommodate his injury.

• He has two major projects in the works, Wall Street 2, with Michael Douglas; and The Associate, a movie adaptation of a John Grisham novel. 

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