Shia Saide LaBeouf (born June 11, 1986) is a Daytime Emmy Award-winning 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", might become a major film star throughout 2007.
Childhood
Shia LaBeouf (pronounced [ˈʃajə lə'bʌf], "Shy-uh La-Buff") 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. 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. 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'. LaBeouf has said that he comes from "five generations of performers" and was "acting when [he] came out of the womb". LaBeouf's father is a Cajun (once described by LaBeouf as a "Ragin' Cajun") and his New York-born mother is Jewish, and LaBeouf was raised in the Jewish religion and had a Bar Mitzvah. 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". LaBeouf's father used to grow cannabis, and the two smoked marijuana together when LaBeouf was ten. 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". 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.
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.[15] 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"). 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.
Personal life
LaBeouf attended 32nd Street Visual and Performing Arts Magnet school in Los Angeles (LAUSD) and Alexander Hamilton High School, although he received most of his education from tutors. He bought his own house at the age of eighteen, lives in Burbank, California and remains close to both his parents; his mother now lives nearby in Tujunga, Los Angeles, California and his father in Montana. LaBeouf was accepted to Yale University, but declined, later remarking that he is "getting the kind of education you don't get at school", although he would like to attend college. LaBeouf is a smoker, drives a Nissan Maxima and has two bulldogs named Brando and Rex. He has said that "sports is so big in my life" and that he is a "film junkie". He enjoys the music of The Shins and the hip-hop label Definitive Jux.
As far as dating goes, he and his longtime girlfriend, China Brezner broke up before Disturbia. She was the daughter of producer Larry Brezner whom LaBeouf worked on a movie project with. He is currently single and says he's "too busy for a relationship."
LaBeouf has cited actors Dustin Hoffman, Jodie Foster, Jon Voight and John Turturro as inspirations, 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". 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".
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".
|
|
|
|
Featured Photo
Featured Photo
Links
Disclaimer
|
|
Indiana Jones 4
