Last February Shia LaBeouf put his film career on hold again to enter a rehabilitation center. The news came two months after his ex-partner, singer FKA Twigs, denounced him for physical, s-xual and emotional abuse. Some accusations that the actor acknowledged and that come to add to the long history of alcoholism, arrests and violence that, between blockbuster and blockbuster, he has accumulated.
LaBeouf was born on June 11, 1986 in Los Angeles. His father, a Vietnam War veteran, and his mother, a dancer turned visual artist and jewelry designer, raised him in a hippie environment. Although the actor has described his childhood as happy, he has also assured that his father was hospitalized for his heroin addiction, that he accompanied him on several occasions to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or that he pointed a gun at him while he had a flashback of the war. In fact, he has said that he started doing comedy to escape from this hostile environment and try to help his parents financially, who after divorcing were about to give his uncle up for adoption because they could not support him.
At the age of 14, LaBeouf became known among the younger audience as the protagonist of the Disney Channel series Mano a mano. And since then his work in the cinema has followed one another: The Curse of the Holes, Constantine, Memoirs of Queens, Disturbia and two blockbusters that would end up elevating him to star status: Transformers and Indiana Jones.
With his success, he wanted to become an independent artist with existential performances, like when he locked himself in a movie theater for three days to see all of his filmography, and antics in front of the press, accumulating endless arrests along the way for his behavior. violent of him. As LOC or Page Six have compiled, at the age of 25 he had already been arrested half a dozen times for threatening his neighbor, for refusing to leave an establishment where he said they did not want to serve him, driving under the influence of alcohol or fighting in a bar.
In 2014 he showed up at the premiere of Nymphomaniac in Berlin with a paper bag on his head that read "I'm not famous anymore". Shortly thereafter, he was arrested at a Cabaret on Broadway showing for smoking and drunkenly yelling obscenities in the room. As part of the plea deal, he entered a detox clinic. But in 2015 he was arrested again for disorderly conduct due to his drunken state. And some video surveillance cameras caught him during an altercation in which he was violent with his partner, the actress Mia Goth. "If I had stayed there, I would have killed her," he is heard saying in the video, posted by Entertainment Tonight.
In 2017, LaBeouf was arrested twice more, first during a protest against Donald Trump and then for another altercation in which he made racist comments. The actor attributed his aggressiveness to his addictions and, again, agreed to go to therapy.
As Insider recently pointed out, Hollywood has fueled LaBeouf's history of violence and abuse because, during all this time, not only has he not stopped working, but his on-screen roles have become more aggressive. This vicious circle caused the actor's violent behavior to be rewarded with the juiciest roles in movies like Lawless, the aforementioned Nymphomaniac, Hearts of Steel or American Honey.
To all this background was added, at the end of 2020, the complaint of FKA Twigs. "Shia LaBeouf hurts women. He uses them. He abuses them, both physically and mentally. He is dangerous," the singer said. Shortly after her, her colleague, Sia, assured that LaBeouf cheated on her during the recording of the Elastic Heart video clip in 2015, making her believe that he was single and called him a pathological liar. And the stylist Karolyn Pho, also a former partner of the actor, accused the actor of physically and psychologically abusing her.
The actor acknowledged FKA Twigs' accusations saying, "I have no excuse to explain the problems I have with alcohol and my aggressiveness. For all these years I have been violent with myself and with the people around me. I am ashamed of this behavior." and I apologize to the people I have hurt. As noted above, the actor once again entered a detox clinic to treat his problems, but this time his career might not bounce back so easily.
According to Variety, director Olivia Wilde fired LaBeouf from the filming of the film Don't Worry Darling due to the bad atmosphere he generated among the cast. Ahead of the Oscars, Netflix removed his name from the promotional campaign for Fragments of a Woman, a film in which he starred. And like his colleague Johnny Depp, at the moment he doesn't have any projects underway.
