Shia LaBeouf has made a new best friend in the form of director, Steven Spielberg. Judging by the inferences one can make from the interview snippet below, there is some serious man-crushage going on between the Academy Award winning filmmaker and his 22-year-old muse.
The Beef has caught more than one lucky break. Before he starred in the Transformers franchise, the scrawny actor was best known for being the sidekick to actual leading men. He was the mini me of both Will Smith and Keanu Reeves in I Am Robot and Constantine respectively. The boy has to grow up and become a man sometime. In Hollywood, that comes in the form of being the headlining star in a movie that costs more than a buck fifty and not sinking the entire damn thing.
Having broken through in 2003 with the acclaimed kiddies’ film Holes, LaBeouf became a box-office star in 2007 when the Spielberg-produced Transformers and the Rear Window-for-teens outing Disturbia both hit the No1 spot around the world. Suddenly, Shia LaBeouf found himself an unlikely leading man.
“A lot of that had to do with Steven’s faith in me,” says the 22-year-old today. “It does a lot for your confidence, when you have someone like Steven Spielberg telling you that he wants you to lead his picture. It also makes the rest of Hollywood sit up and listen . . .”
And the tabloids weren’t too far behind. Throw in a pivotal role in last year’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and now, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and you’ve got yourself a glittering career. (full interview @ The Herald)
Image credit to Tonya Wise/ London Ent/ Splash.
