Kid A

Shia LaBeouf tears into the room, full of apologies and awkward gait. “I’m real sorry but I gotta pee,” he says waving toward the corner of the room.

Yikes. As it happens we’re in the ridiculously po-mo Sanderson hotel, a joint that may well double as a Daft Punk video stage. In keeping with that wacky architectural spirit, the facilities are obscured only by a thin pink curtain, which, in the rush, young Shia (pronounced Shy-ah) neglects to pull.
Where to look? The clever-clever painting hung on the ceiling seems like a good bet.
“Be done in a minute,” he yells.
Oh well, this is one way to meet Hollywood’s hottest property.
For some years now, studio moguls have been throwing the runes in anticipation of a Millennium Generation star. Gen Y has, to date, produced plenty of Josh’s and Jessica’s, but they came, we saw, we shrugged our shoulders.
Born between 1977 and 2002, the kids of the new century, raised in a decidedly child-centric culture, need something different from their would-be icons. They need someone who knows exactly what he or she wants and who isn’t afraid to tell you so. They need a free spirit. They need Shia LaBeouf.
A bundle of fun and raw energy, when he has finally tucked everything away he sits down and starts talking. And talking. And talking.
“Oh yeah, the name,” he says. “My dad is Cajun so I have a lot of family in Louisiana. There’s like hundreds of them. There are huge cemeteries entirely for LaBeouf’s there. It’s a pretty cool lineage and a good group of people. I mean, wow, the Cajun are strange. They live on boats and they’re weird and funny and they all seem to be drunks. So Shia is Hebrew for ‘gift from god’ because I’m Jewish through my mom and I was named after my grandfather who escaped from the Nazis in Poland. Then LaBeouf means ‘the beef’ so my name means ‘thank God for beef’. And that’s good. I like beef. I don’t mind being a walking advertisement for beef. But I went to France and they said Shia means ‘shit’, so there my name means ‘shit the beef out’. I like the version where I’m a cool gift from God a whole lot better.”
A gifted child-star, young Shia had already won two Emmys with the Disney Channel series Even Stevens, when, aged 16, he made the transition to the big screen with the excellent all-ages adventure Holes. Roles in Constantine and The Greatest Game Ever Played soon followed, but the past 12 months have seen him emerge as The Next Big Thing. Ever since the 21-year-old starred in Disturbia, the supremely entertaining Rear Window riff that topped the US box-office for weeks this spring, he’s been on a roll with hits like Surf’s Up.
Time magazine are calling him “the scrappy kid next door” turned superstar. Vanity Fair have plastered him across the cover of their current issue. Steven Spielberg, a reliable hand in the movie business if ever there was one, has adopted Shia as the hip poster-boy of Dreamworks Studios by casting him in the new Indiana Jones movie.
“Oh yeah, I know, it’s fucking crazy,” he tells me. “I am so in the lucky club. There are so many talented people out there who don’t work. If you look at the crop of young actors I am surrounded by, I mean, oh man, you look at Jamie Bell, he is an ace, he’s just incredible. There are a whole lot of young actors who don’t work who are more talented than I am. I’m just lucky.”
Having bewitched the American public and Mr. Spielberg, I wonder if he’s starting to feel the pressures of celebrity kicking in?
“Well, it’s too much weight and I haven’t accepted any of it yet,” he laughs. “I should not be working with Steven and when Steven Spielberg becomes Steven and Harrison Ford becomes Harrison, it’s insane. My dad never gave a shit about movies and that maintains normality for me, but then I told him about Harrison pulling out the whip for training and even dad went nuts. I mean Indiana Jones is the greatest franchise ever made in the history of the world and Harrison is a modern day Steve McQueen. He’s like a superhero in real life. He can physically do stuff I can’t do at 21. It’s awesome.”
The key to Mr. LaBeouf’s charisma is, one suspects, his unconventional upbringing. His mother, Shayna, was a ballet dancer turned artist. His father, Jeffrey Craig LaBeouf, was a mime turned heroin addict turned rodeo clown. The family lived all over California, in biker enclaves and bohemian garrets. Sometimes Shia would sell the jewellery his mom made on street corners. Other times, he’d dress as a clown and work from his dad’s makeshift hot-dog concession stand.
“My parents are gypsy hippies,” explains Shia. “They don’t have an occupation. They are artists. They were rock stars. They were singers. They were painters. They were dancers. They made things. You name it. Bureaucratic life was always looked down upon. My mom held things together and my dad partied. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great dad and I was always encouraged to be myself and express myself. But it was a crazy way to grow up.”
Naturally enough, Shia struck out on his own as a teenage stand-up comic (“I talked about my first erection and made it as disgusting as possible,” he recalls) until a chance meeting with Shawn Toovey, the young star of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman got him thinking about acting.
“I really liked the idea of going to school for only three hours a day on set,” says Shia. “But mainly I got into it because I was broke and it was available and my parents didn’t have a gig at the time. It was just a way to support my family. I was being paid and living in a motel. I did not know anything about craft until I met Jon Voight. Jon Voight changed my whole life. If I had not met him I would not still be doing this. He introduced me to the magic of it. He would bring movies on set and say: ‘Here is The Blackboard Jungle – go watch it and have fun.’ He changed my life but he’s such a great guy he doesn’t think anything of it. Ask him and he’ll say: ‘I was just talking to the kid,’ but he outlined the difference between personality and performance and what to say and how much mystery to maintain. It was stuff I would never have thought about.”
Unsurprisingly, Mr. LaBeouf’s other favourite thespians all seem to spring from the same earthy school as Mr. Voight.
“I never went to a class or anything so maybe that’s why I like the actors who appear to come from the street and draw on that background for their craft,” he says. “I love Gary Oldman and Daniel Day Lewis and Dustin Hoffman, those guys who mix it up. Oh man, you watch Hoffman in something like Kramer Vs. Kramer and it’s this really heartbreaking movie, but he’s still hilarious in it at just the right moments. But I also like watching Paris Hilton on screen.”
Oh really? In movies or in, erm, movies?
“Like there’s a difference,” he laughs. “I honestly just find her interesting. It’s like there’s no variation. Ever.”
For all the kerfuffle surrounding the young star, none of it seems to have gone to his head. He can’t face reading fan mail – “I’ve never seen any,” he says, “because it would mess my head and turn me into an asshole. He can’t even bear to watch himself onscreen.
“I read reviews but I’m my worst critic,” he admits. “I can’t enjoy movies that I’m in. Transformers is the first movie of mine I’ve watched. But that’s because I wanted to see the robots.”
Ah yes, Transformers. Michael Bay’s live-action extravaganza has already – deservedly – broken all box-office records for a non-sequel by taking a whopping $155.4 million during its opening week across the Atlantic. The actual transformation sequences would alone justify the admission price, but Mr. Bay’s trademark bombast has been cleverly tempered by Steven Spielberg’s involvement as executive producer. The ET director insisted that at heart, the movie should be “about a boy and his car.” Happily, Shia, his new muse, was enlisted for the job and given free reign to ad-lib. Mr. LaBeouf’s witty contributions ensure that Transformers isn’t simply a bunch of spectacular special effects in search of a movie. Instead, taking cues from John Hughes, Goonies and Herbie Goes Bananas, this is the great teen movie of the age and a thrill-ride of gargantuan proportions for your inner 12-year-old.
“It’s the biggest thing I have ever been part of,” gushes Shia. “I was already a big fan. I grew up with Transformers so to be involved with the movie is like floating on a cloud. It is so weird when your dream car becomes your car. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got Bumblebee.’ He was always my favourite, better than Optimus Prime, better than anyone. When you’re shooting in a big special effects movie most of the time you’re saying lines to a green ball on a stick. But it wasn’t hard to conjure up emotions. I was totally in love with Bumblebee. For real.”
Is it the case that he’s found the only line of employment which can possibly match up to his fantastical childhood?
“Maybe that’s it,” he says. “I’m a big dreamer. I’ll never dream about one unicorn when I can dream about seven. But now, it’s like I’m living dreams. I mean, if you spend your time dreaming about what you can’t have then maybe I’m going to have to start dreaming about being a train conductor or an office worker or some shit like that.”
Transformers is released on July 27.