When it rains it pours for Shia LaBeouf.
Just as the embattled "Transformers" star revealed that he was contemplating suicide ahead of converting to Catholicism, he found himself embroiled in a war of words with his former director Olivia Wilde, who recently said she fired him from her new film "Don't Worry Darling" because his creative process "was not conducive to the ethos" she demands on her productions.
According to Variety, LaBeouf — who describes himself as an immersive actor — denied Wilde's claim and asserted that he "quit the film due to lack of rehearsal time," citing 2020 emails and text messages he allegedly sent the director before she replaced him with her now-boyfriend Harry Styles.
Variety published an email LaBeouf, 36, wrote to Wilde, 38, in response to Variety's earlier story about his 2020 departure, which he characterized as "attractive clickbait, as I am still persona-non-grata and may remain as such for the rest of my life." He also rebutted the "firing" narrative Wilde set forth while promoting the film, and his missive included several new details about his professional and personal life.
"Firing me never took place, Olivia. And while I fully understand the attractiveness of pushing that story because of the current social landscape, the social currency that brings. It is not the truth," he reportedly wrote. "So I am humbly asking, as a person with an eye toward making things right, that you correct the narrative as best you can. I hope none of this negatively [affects] you, and that your film is successful in all the ways you want it to be."
The "Honey Boy" and "The Peanut Butter Falcon" star also revealed that he is 627 days sober and has reunited with his wife, Mia, as they raise Isabel, their 5-month-old daughter together.
A representative for Wilde did not immediately respond Friday to the L.A. Times' request for comment.
On Thursday, LaBeouf opened up in a separate forum about the changes he underwent after facing several years of public relations crises, including allegations of abuse and sexual misconduct by former partner FKA twigs and other legal woes. Setting his "life on fire" eventually led him to Catholicism while he was working on the film "Padre Pio," a biopic about the Italian priest Francesco Forgione, who was canonized in 2002.
The topics of Catholicism and "trippy" acting processes also recently collided when famed Method actor Andrew Garfield recently spoke about his process while playing a Jesuit priest in Martin Scorsese's 2016 film "Silence" — and the abstinence it entailed. LaBeouf on Thursday said that he's not at the level or in the "intellectual" and "douchey" school of thought of Method acting. He instead described himself as "an unintellectual feeler" and an "immersive actor" during a sprawling conversation about acting, spirituality and his conversion with Bishop Robert Barron, the former Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles and founder of the Word on Fire ministry.
"Pio's interesting because Pio also saved my life, it's not just like a movie or something like that. And I don't mean that lightly. If you like immersive experiences and you get tasked with playing Pio, your life is going to change," LaBeouf said.
Pio, the Capuchin friar who died in 1968, is highly regarded in the Roman Catholic Church as one of the most spiritual men who ever lived. "Bad Lieutenant" director Abel Ferrara offered LaBeouf the role when the actor was at the lowest point in his life and career, even contemplating suicide. La Beouf credits the role with saving him.
"I had a gun on the table. I didn't want be alive anymore when all of this happened, OK. Shame like I had never experienced before," LaBeouf told Barron.
LaBeouf researched the part by staying at a seminary in San Lorenzo, California, and living out of his car in the parking lot before he was slowly taken in by the residents. He described himself as "nuclear" at the time and nobody wanted to talk to him — not his manager, his agent or even his mother.
"I walked into this, my life was on fire. I was walking out of hell," he said. "It wasn't like I willingly came in here [the church] on a white horse singing show tunes. I came in here on fire. I didn't want to be an actor anymore, and my life was a complete mess. And I had hurt a lot of people, and I felt deep shame and deep guilt. I didn't like to go outside much. I had yearning not [to] be here anymore, you know, I was on my way out."
He also addressed some of the "disgusting, depraved" allegations against him, such as that he was abusive to women, was shooting dogs and willingly giving women sexually transmitted diseases. (In December 2020, FKA twigs accused the actor of physical, sexual and psychological abuse and sued him for repeated abuse and assaults that he allegedly inflicted during their relationship. He also faced charges of misdemeanor battery and petty theft stemming from an altercation in June 2020.)
The former Disney Channel star said that his mother was not a practicing Jew but was Jewish in culture and that he had a bar mitzvah mainly to please his ailing grandmother. He later learned that his uncle baptized him a Christian. He said that his spirituality long "felt fake" and that he previously equated art, love and God as synonyms — and that acting made him feel godlike.
"I know now God was using my ego to draw me to Him, was drawing me away from worldly desires," he added. "It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in the car and drive up [to the seminary] if I didn't think, 'Oh, I'm gonna save my career.'
"And what happened to me is ... a switch happened."
He said he was egotistical when he came on board the film, seeing it as a move to help rehabilitate his career by co-starring with Willem Dafoe. But the pain he had experienced in recent years made him willing to go about the role — specifically how he was spending time at the seminary — differently. That and the life of Pio helped him better understand suffering and how to use his purpose to help other people.
As he started leaning into the religion, LaBeouf said he fell in with a group of men at the seminary who start talking to him about the gospel, which he'd never read, and was struck by figures such as John the Baptist and the directive to just "let go." His stay at the seminary also introduced him to Barron, who helped him define how to pray during his time there.
"It was seeing other people who had sinned beyond anything I could even conceptualize also being found in Christ that made me feel like, 'OK, that gives me hope,'" LaBeouf added. "I started hearing experiences of other depraved people who had found their way in this, and it made me feel like I had permission."
———
