Shia LaBeouf Once Rejected Steven Spielberg’s Advice to Be More Like Tom Cruise
Steven Spielberg was very keen on mentoring and collaborating with young actor Shia LaBeouf. But when Spielberg once suggested he should carry himself more like Tom Cruise, LaBeouf felt that advice wasn’t for him.
Shia LaBeouf realized the kind of actor he wanted to be after Steven Spielberg’s advice
Spielberg briefly took LaBeouf under his wing, casting him in his Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull. The director also had a hand in producing some of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, which LaBeouf was a part of as well. But Spielberg took a deeper interest in the actor’s personal well-being and overall career.
Being in the spotlight at such a young age, LaBeouf was at risk of falling into the same self-destructive traps other young actors did. LaBeouf theorized that Spielberg noticed this in him, and tried to correct it before it was too late. Spielberg advised the actor to behave more like other more presentable megastars in public, but LaBeouf wasn’t having it.
“Spielberg was the next guy to try—I remember him saying to me, ‘Tom Cruise never picks his nose in public.’ And all I thought was, ‘I don’t want to be Tom Cruise.’ It was this gut reaction. And Steven was a hero in my house. I remember when I was 3, taking baths with my mom, her petting my head and going, ‘One day you’re going to meet Steven Spielberg.’ And then it happened. He made that comment to me right around the time Vanity Fair put out a piece with me in a spacesuit saying I was the next Tom Hanks,” LaBeouf once said on Interview.
Shia LaBeouf related to darker actors than Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks
One of the reasons LaBeouf didn’t take to Spielberg’s advice was because he didn’t relate to the likes of Cruise and Hanks.
“And though I respect both Hanks and Cruise, it just didn’t appeal to my sensibilities. They’re both great actors. But I just didn’t feel like we were cut from the same fabric. My upbringing was darker. The guys who I looked up to were far darker. So I rejected that label hard,” LaBeouf said.
Instead, he saw himself more in other actors with edgier backgrounds and attitudes.
“Gary Oldman, Sean Penn, Joaquin Phoenix—guys who dealt with material that had more intrinsic value. This can be a very debilitating job for an actor. Sometimes you don’t have any say about your creative process. And when I watched the movies of the guys I admired, it felt like they had put a spin on it. They were working on things that appealed to a certain kind of mythos,” LaBeouf said.
Cruise and Hanks felt far too clean-cut to be realistic role-models for LaBeouf.
“Whereas I think Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks came with something more heroic about them. Even in the comics I used to read, I didn’t like Superman, I liked Venom. I was raised on The Simpsons, Bebe’s Kids, and South Park. I was raised with irony,” LaBeouf added.
Shia LaBeouf once regretted complaining about working with Steven Spielberg
Working with Spielberg may have been a dream to LaBeouf, but the reality didn’t quite live up to the fantasy. In a 2016 interview with Variety, LaBeouf reflected on why he was so disappointed with their collaboration.
“You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” LaBeouf said. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a f***ing company.”
LaBeouf also revealed that the only movie he did with Spielberg that he enjoyed was Transformers. But not much later on, the Even Stevens alum expressed regret over how he handled his feelings towards Spielberg.
“I f*** up sometimes, you know,” LaBeouf said in a 2017 interview with Sway in the Morning (via AV Club). “I probably could’ve gone lighter on Spielberg, that was probably something I should’ve backed off of.”
