14 DAY TRIAL // One of the hottest movie releases of the fall is the David Ayer-directed war drama “Fury,” with Brad Pitt and Shia LaBeouf as leads. Because the movie isn’t going to promote itself, Shia sat down for an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, and for the first time since his much-mediated “I am not famous anymore” meltdown, talked about what really happened.
The meltdown culminated with an arrest that saw the actor spend 24 hours in jail, after he was detained for disturbing a Broadway play and spitting on the arresting officers.
Shia credits his mother, whom he calls “my girl,” for making him understand he was going down a very dangerous path. That part of the interview is actually very sweet, and you can find it available in the second video embedded below.
“An existential crisis,” code-name for meltdown
The first signs of trouble with Shia started to emerge right after he was accused of plagiarizing his first novel, and he apologized on social media by stealing famous quotes, thus feeding fuel to the scandal.
In almost no time, everybody and their mother were against the actor, accusing him of being anything from a poser to a shameless thief and yet another desperate-for-attention wannabe-serious-artist. The backlash was huge and probably comparable to the one against golfer Tiger Woods, after he was exposed as a serial cheater.
Shia continued feeding the frenzy by setting up an art installation called #IAMSORRY, which basically allowed anyone in New York the chance to sit down with him at a table and insult him, if that’s what they wanted to do.
A few months later, still hated and mocked online, Shia disrupted the aforementioned theater play and was arrested. He avoided doing more jail time by agreeing to go to rehab for an alleged drinking problem, but reports online suggest he might have received treatment for drug addiction as well.
Shia won’t say if there’s truth to them, calling the entire meltdown an “existential crisis.” “Which turned into some explorations. I had some hiccups, some judgment errors,” he admits.
Jail and his mother were the best wakeup calls ever
You can tell from the first video embedded below that Shia is still pretty much a tormented soul and that whatever pushed him to act this way isn’t gone for good. He explains he got into showbiz because he was practically a neglected and unloved child who wanted to feel as if he belonged, and how much it hurt him to see that the entire world turned on him.
His crisis was a major one, but jail and his mother helped him snap out of it. “Jail was quite scary… I was there for, it felt like forever, I think 24 hours 25 hours. I really went all the way with it they put a Hannibal mask on me and a led jacket. It was very scary,” he says.
He’s not joking: at the time of the arrest, reports said that he had spit on cops and tried to pull the “don’t you know who I am?” card on them, to avoid getting dragged to the station and be charged. The same reports claimed that, because he had turned this violent towards the officers, he had been put in a face mask.
Apparently, that was true, which really goes to prove that there’s rarely smoke without a fire, at least where celebrities are concerned.
To Shia’s credit, he’s sorry; he even looks into the camera and apologizes to the police officer he spit on during the arrest, describing his gesture as “crazy.”
So, do you believe him? Does Shia come across as honest to you, or could he be just playing along because he has a new movie to promote? Watch the interview and drop us a line in the comments section below.
