Shia LaBeouf Was Once Made Fun of for Being on ‘Even Stevens’: ‘It Was Kind of Embarrassing’
Actor Shia LaBeouf has come a long way from his Even Stevens days. But his rise to moviestardom wasn’t easy after being a part of the hit TV series.
Shia LaBeouf was once made fun of for being on ‘Even Stevens’
LaBeouf was mostly known for starring in the hit Disney series Even Stevens before he transitioned over to other film projects. According to The Washington Post, LaBeouf wanted to become an actor from an early age after meeting another child actor.
The child actor’s success motivated LaBeouf to make his way into the entertainment industry by getting an agent. A couple of years later, LaBeouf’s persistence would pay off by landing the starring role in Even Stevens.
Although Even Stevens was LaBeouf’s first claim to fame, being a part of the television series came with a few challenges. The Transformers star would later seek to break away from the Disney image to forge a more diverse acting career.
“I didn’t just want to be a churn-’em-out guy. I never really felt like I fit in there. From the moment I got there, all my friends were [making fun of me], like, ‘Dude, you’re at the Disney Channel!’ It was kind of embarrassing,” he once said in an interview with MTV News.
To successfully branch out, LaBeouf came up with a strategy.
“The plan was to do something completely bipolar. We wanted to go in opposite directions, which was hard. So I did [the] Project Greenlight [movie, The Battle of Shaker Heights], and I did Holes,” he said. “The Greenlight thing was big for me because I was in the Miramax world, which is a subsidiary of Disney, but a darker dimension. I got to curse and people got to meet me for the first time. People realized I wasn’t going to be coming out with a Kwanzaa album.”
Shia LaBeouf felt Jon Voight helped save his career
LaBeouf pulled from the support of others to help his transition from Disney star to respected actor. One of his mentors was veteran actor Jon Voight, who he worked alongside with on Holes. Voight was instrumental in helping LaBeouf craft the kind of career he’d wanted for himself earlier in his career.
“Jon put me onto all these books and s*** and actors I had never seen and told me what acting really was, aside from the materialistic world that I was trapped in. I swear to God if I had not met him I’d be making Christmas albums. It’d be all this Disney s***, I’d just be doing crap,” LaBeouf once said according to Female First.
LaBeouf noted to The Washington Post that he continued to study Voight’s own Hollywood career. So much so he molded a bit of his career after the actor.
“Then I started watching [Voight’s] movies . . . and seeing that he was shape-shifting from role to role. And that he could do everything. He could do comedy, he could do drama,” LaBeouf said. “And it was amazing to me.”
Shia LaBeouf learned that being a child star gave him PTSD
LaBeouf realized not too long ago that his years as a child actor resulted in some lingering psychological affects he didn’t know he had. LaBeouf had been involved in many scandals and controversies over the years, and found himself in frequent battles with alcoholism.
After being arrested in 2017 for disorderly conduct, LaBeouf was sent to a rehab facility where he learned the underlying source of his behavior.
“It was the first time I’d been told I had PSTD. I just thought I was an alcoholic, like a true blue drunk and I needed to deal with that,” LeBeouf said on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast. “I knew it was an issue but didn’t know there was this extra whole other thing that was hindering my ability to have any peace in my life and my ability to deal with people.”
