Word: labeouf
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Dates: during 2007-2007
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...lead penguin in the animated Surf's Up; the vulnerable bad boy in this spring's surprise hit, the Hitchcockian teen thriller Disturbia; and Spielberg's hand-picked choice to co-star with Ford and Cate Blanchett in the long-awaited fourth Indiana Jones movie due next May, LaBeouf is blowing up faster than a stunt car on a Michael Bay set. In an age when potential action heroes seem to be either rugged '80s relics like Ford and Sylvester Stallone or sensitive thespians willing to double up on their bench presses like Tobey Maguire and Orlando Bloom, LaBeouf...
...authenticity that helps him ground those fantastic tales was earned through some harsh beginnings. LaBeouf grew up in Los Angeles' Echo Park, a mainly Latino working-class neighborhood, the only child of a drug-addicted Vietnam-vet father and a hippie-ballerina mother with a bum knee. "My family's lineage is five generations of artists who never made it," LaBeouf says. His first name, which rhymes with hi-ya, was the name of his maternal grandfather, a Catskills comic. His last name, pronounced La-Buff, is a name shared with his paternal grandmother, a Beatnik poet...
...LaBeouf's father was a professional clown. When Shia was 2 years old, the family put together a street act to raise cash. "Latins are into clowns," says Shia. "We were the only white family around, so we figured we could do the look-at-us thing and dance around like a bunch of idiots." LaBeouf's father stole a maid's cart from a Best Western, decorated it with paint and streamers, stocked it with hot dogs and shaved ice and took his family to the park in clown costumes to perform. "I hated selling hot dogs. I hated...
From an early age, LaBeouf was exposed to adult pastimes. With his dad he watched Steve McQueen movies and went to Rolling Stones concerts and AA meetings, where, at age 10, he learned to smoke and play cards. He met a kid whose surfboard he really liked. "He was on Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman," LaBeouf says. "He had all the stuff I wanted, materially. When you're in school, if you've got the new Filas on, no one's gonna punch you that day." The key to new Filas, LaBeouf figured, was to get paid to clown around...
...talked his way into a stand-up gig at a comedy club in Pasadena, Calif. "My thing was the 50-year-old mouth on the 10-year-old body," LaBeouf says. He took to the stage in overalls, with a bowl haircut, and "the first words out of my mouth would be 'Listen, assholes,'" he says. "Sometimes I would bomb. I'd talk about personal stuff and instead of laughing, people would look at me like, 'Oh, man, I'm so sorry.'" The potty-mouthed-preteen act only took him so far, so at age 11 LaBeouf found an agent...