Shia LaBeouf
Shia Saide LaBeouf (pronounced SHY-uh La-Buff) is an American actor, voice actor, and comedian who began his comedy career at the age of 10.
Shia was born in Los Angeles, California, an only child. His mother, Shayna, is a dancer and ballerina turned visual artist and clothing/jewelry designer; before she met Shia's father, she ran a head shop in Brooklyn - according to Shia, "Bob Dylan used to come in and smoke weed. All her furniture hung upside-down from the ceiling". Shia's father, Jeffrey Craig LaBeouf, is a Vietnam War veteran who "drifted" from job to job, working as a mime at a circus, a snow cone salesman, a rodeo clown and a stand-up comedian, and touring with the Doobie Brothers as their opening act. Shia's New York-born mother is Jewish and his father is a French-Cajun. Shia was raised in the Jewish religion and had a Bar Mitzvah. The name Shia is Hebrew for "gift from God" and the surname LaBeouf is a corruption of "le bœuf", the French term for "the ox" or "the beef".
Shia has said that he comes from "five generations of performers" and was "acting when [he] came out of the womb." One of his great-grandmothers played piano in gangster Lucky Luciano’s casino. His maternal grandfather, a Polish Holocaust survivor who shared his first name, was a comedian who worked in the Borscht Belt of the Catskill Mountains and sidelined as a barber for the Mafia. Shia's alcoholic paternal grandfather was a Green Beret in the military and his paternal grandmother was a Beatnik poet and lesbian who associated with Allen Ginsberg.
Shia 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." His father used to grow cannabis, and the two smoked marijuana together when LaBeouf was ten. Shia 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 his mother was "trying to hold down the fort." Young Shia was subjected to verbal and mental abuse by his heroin-addicted father who once pointed a gun at his son during a Vietnam War flashback. 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. Shia's uncle was going to adopt him at one stage because his parents couldn't afford to have him anymore, "they had too much pride to go on welfare or food stamps."
In a May 2009 PARADE magazine interview, Shia states, "I just knew that money was a solution to whatever the hell was going on in my household. With money, I and my family would have had more options. So I went after a job that I thought I could make the most money for a 10-year-old or an 11-year-old boy."' He also shared how in 1988, when he was two, his dad began dressing him up as a clown and putting him to work shilling for the family's pushcart business. "It was a hustle. We’d walk around the neighborhood in full clown regalia," he recalls. "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."
Shia attended a predominantly Latino and African American school. Theatrically, LaBeouf attended 32nd Street Visual and Performing Arts Magnet school in Los Angeles and Alexander Hamilton High School, although he received most of his education from tutors. Following high-school, he 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.
He said that he initially became an actor because his family was broke, not because he wanted to pursue an acting career. “My humor came from seeing my parents have sex, smoke weed, my mom being naked—just weird hippie stuff, twisted R-rated humor,” he says. “I’d get up there in my OshKosh B’Gosh outfit and my bowl haircut. I was a little kid with a Lenny Bruce mouth. That was the act. But there’s no money in stand-up comedy, so I went into acting.” Shia began acting when he was 12 years old. His acting debut was on Caroline in the City in 1998, in the episode "Caroline and the Bar Mitzvah", and he made guest appearances on popular television shows such as The X-Files, Touched by an Angel, Jesse, and Suddenly Susan, all in 1999.
He became known among younger audiences for his part in the Disney Channel series Even Stevens, also appearing in three Disney TV movies. In 2003, Shia made his film debut in Holes, also appearing in the lead role in The Battle of Shaker Heights the same year.
In 2005, he made his transition from teen roles in The Greatest Game Ever Played. In 2007, he starred as the leads in Disturbia and Transformers, and the following year he appeared in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as Indiana's son. In 2009, LaBeouf reprised his role as Sam Witwicky in the Transformers sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and appeared in New York, I Love You. In 2010, he had a lead role in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. A third installment of the Transformers series is set to release in 2011.
In May 2009, LaBeouf made his directorial debut by directing Cage's music video for the single "I Never Knew You".
LaBeouf bought his own two-bedroom house at the age of 18, 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.
Wow. What a life this kid has already had at 23 years of age. According to Mastermedia's "The Mediator," in the Parade magazine cited above Shia said, "I know I'm one of the luckiest dudes in America right now. I have a great house, my parents don't have to work. I've got money. I'm famous. But, it could all change, man. It could go away. You never know." He admits, "Sometimes I feel I'm living a meaningless life, and I get frightened." He admits he thinks acting is a "con game," and he doesn't know what it is he does that people like.
No doubt, establishing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ would provide meaning for him, like it has for hundreds of millions of others. Pray for Shia -- that God will draw Shia to His Son, Jesus Christ, with whom he will find meaning and contentment and eternal life.