Former Disney star Shia LaBeouf has laid bare his troubles with alcohol and Hollywood in a new interview.
The actor gets candid in an interview with Variety magazine and reveals all about how he is slowly getting his life back on track.
Opening up about his past and why he never fit in with his fellow Disney stars, the 30-year-old Lawless actor also tells how he hasn’t had a drink in almost a year.
He said: “Alcohol or any of that s–t will send you haywire. I can’t f–k with none of it. I’ve got to keep my head low.
“I got a Napoleonic complex. I start drinking and I feel smaller than I am, and I get louder than I should. It’s just not for me, dude.”
In the past five years, the Fury star has been arrested for several booze-related incidents and sparked concern for his bizarre behaviour, including wearing a paper bag over his head to a movie premier.
“I had people tell me it was going to [ruin my career],” he said.
“People I respected — dudes I wanted to work with — just looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Life’s too short for this s–t.’
“I’m still earning my way back. I’m happy working.”
Though Shia has definitely had his fair share of ups and downs, it sounds like he’s in a much more balanced place today.
“I don’t think I’d be working with the directors I’ve been working with if I had not f–ked up a bit,” he says of his past mistakes.
“They wanted a f–king fireball. They wanted a loose cannon. I’m learning how to distill my ‘crazy’ into something manageable, that I can shape and deliver on the day.”
Aside from managing his “crazy,” Shia’s gotten his personal life in order too.
He’s engaged to British model Mia Goth and says he’s even toned down his drinking.
“I never knew how to drink,” he declares.
Shia also reveals how a troubled childhood impacted his career.
While he filmed Even Stevens, he lived in a hotel with his dad.
Speaking of this time he said: “There were drugs everywhere — marijuana, cocaine, heroin.
“[My dad] gave me my first joint when I was probably 11 or 12.”
He explained that he never meshed with the rest of the Disney crowd because of his childhood.
“They would invite the Hilary Duffs and Miley Cyruses to go to the Jonas Brothers concert, and I’d be there with my friends. But we were outsiders. It felt distant,” he said.
While he has nothing but praise for his Transformers director, Michael Bay, some other well-known Hollywood directors are a different story.
He said: “I don’t like the movies that I made with [Steven] Spielberg.
“The only movie that I liked that we made together was the Transformers one,” he said of the film, which Spielberg executive-produced.
Spielberg also directed him in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and executive-produced Shia’s film Eagle Eye, along with the rest of the Transformers franchise.
“You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” LaBeouf continued.