COOL KID: SHIA LABEOUF

Shia LaBeouf

Shia Saide LaBeouf[1] (pronounced /ˈʃaɪə ləˈbʌf/ "SHY-uh luh-BUFF"; born June 11, 1986) is an American actor and comedian.
After growing up in California, LaBeouf 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 supporting roles in Constantine and I, Robot.
Following LaBeouf's lead role in The Greatest Game Ever Played, film producer and director Steven Spielberg cast him in starring roles in the 2007 films Disturbia and Transformers. LaBeouf also worked with Spielberg in 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Eagle Eye. Several media publications have speculated that LaBeouf, whose screen persona was described by Time magazine as that of the "scrappy kid next door",[2] would become a major film star throughout 2008.[3][4][5][6] LaBeouf was born in Los Angeles, California, the only child of Shayna (née Saide), a dancer and ballerina turned visual artist and clothing/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.[2][7][8][9][10] Shia LaBeouf's New York-born mother is Jewish and his father is a Cajun (once described by LaBeouf as a "Ragin' Cajun"). LaBeouf was raised in the Jewish religion and had a Bar Mitzvah.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] The name Shia is Hebrew for "gift from God",[17][18] and the surname LaBeouf is a variation of "le boeuf", the French term for "the ox" or "the beef".[19][11] LaBeouf has said that he comes from "five generations of performers" and was "acting when [he] came out of the womb."[10] 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.[19][2][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."[10][21] LaBeouf's father used to grow cannabis, and the two smoked marijuana together when LaBeouf was ten.[7][10] 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."[7] 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.[22][12]

Education
LaBeouf attended a predominantly Latino and African-American school.[22][12] Theatrically, LaBeouf attended 32nd Street Visual and Performing Arts Magnet school in Los Angeles (LAUSD)[10] and Alexander Hamilton High School, although he received most of his education from tutors.[22] Following high-school, LaBeouf was accepted to Yale University but declined, later remarking that he is "getting the kind of education you don't get at school,"[23] although he would like to attend college.[10]

Career

Comedian
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.[12] 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").[24][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.

LaBeouf has said that he initially became an actor because his family was broke, not because he wanted to pursue an acting career.[24] 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. LaBeouf also appeared in the Disney Channel hit Tru Confessions, where he played a mentally challenged kid with a sister who made a documentary about his disability.[12] His father, at the time just released from rehab, served as his on-set parent and the two bonded.[26] LaBeouf was awarded a Daytime Emmy Award for the role of Louis[10] 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.[7] During this time period, LaBeouf also appeared in sketch shows on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.[24] 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.[2] The film was a moderate box office success. Steven Spielberg was also a fan of LaBeouf in Holes, saying he reminded him of a young Tom Hanks.[9]
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 also appeared in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle as Max Petroni, an orphan whom the Angels end up protecting. Off-screen, LaBeouf co-wrote and directed Let's Love Hate, a short drama and winner of the Children's Jury Award in 2004 and the Children's Audience Award in 2005.[27] 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.[2] 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. He also played a young Dito Montiel in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, in the younger version of the same role as Robert Downey, Jr. in a semi-autobiographical account of Montiel's upbringing in 1980s Astoria, Queens. LaBeouf has said that he is not the "All-American Disney role model"[9] and chose to appear in some of his film roles in order to "curse as much as possible"[28] and "age [himself] publicly" after his Disney roles, specifying that Disney is "great and all" and a "nurturing place"[24] but "dehabilitating for an actor", being "one constant string of same".[8] He has also said that he enjoyed being a child actor and hated school.[29]