Probably well known for the roles he played in Disturbia and Transformers, Shia has been in the film industry for a big part of his life. Beginning with comedy sketches and then moving on to Disney roles. Shia has been kept busy since he first decided on his own to pursue an acting career.

Shia attended 32nd Street Visual and Performing Arts Magnet school and Alexander Hamilton High School, both in Los Angeles, although he received most of his education from tutors. He bought his own house at the age of eighteen and lives in Burbank, California and remains close to both his parents; his mother now lives nearby in Tujunga and his father in Montana. Shia was actually accepted to Yale University but declined saying that he is getting the kind of education you don't get at school,[ although eventually he would like to attend college. Shia is a smoker, therefore the raspy voice and drives a Nissan Maxima. He has two bulldogs named Brando and Rex. Shia enjoys sports, primarily college-level sports, and that admits he's a film junkie. His favorite music is The Shins, CKY, and anything on the hip-hop label Definitive Jux.

Shia's acting inspiration comes from Dustin Hoffman, Jodie Foster, Jon Voight and John Turturro, and says that he's very serious about his career and makes a calculated effort to stay away from the LA party scene. He believes that if the industry takes you lightly because you're always partying, then they will take your work lightly as well. Although Shia seems to have a love-hate relationship with the teenage culture that has spawned him, he realizes who his fans are and appreciates their support for his work. Although from Jewish heritage, Shia does not practice Judism but says that his spirituality works within the confines of the religion.

Shia's Childhood

Born in Los Angeles, Shia LaBeouf is the only child of Shayna, his mother who is a dancer and ballerina turned visual artist and jewelry designer. His father, Jeffrey Craig LaBeouf, is a Vietnam War veteran who never really had a steady income drifted from job to job working as a circus mime and rodeo clown. Shia shares his first name with his maternal grandfather who was a comedian who worked in the Catskill Mountains of New York. His paternal grandmother was a Beatnik poet and lesbian who was friends with Allen Ginsberg. The name "Shia" is Hebrew for 'gift from God' and his last name "LaBeouf" is a variation of "Le Boeuf", the French term for 'the beef'. Shia says that he comes from 5 generations of artists/performers and was already acting when he came out of the womb. Shia's father is Cajun and his New York-born mother is Jewish. Shia was raised Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah on his thirteenth birthday. Shia describes his parents assorta hippish and that his father was always tough as nails and a different breed of man,, and his upbringing as similar to a hippy lifestyle, admitting that his parents were pretty weird people but they loved me and I loved them. Shia's father even used to grow pot and the two smoked together when LaBeouf was as young as ten. He also admits that his father was on drugs a lot during his childhood, being addicted to heroin and placed in drug rehabilitation for heroin addiction, while his mom was trying to hold down the fort and raise the family (References to his upbringing show up in the movie 'The Battle of Shaker Heights'). Shia's parents eventually divorced and he had what he has describes as a good childhood, growing up poor with his mother, who worked selling fabrics and brooches, in Echo Park, Los Angeles and attending racially diversified, with an emphasis on minorities, school.

Shia's Career

As a child. Shia says he would create things, story lines and fictitious tales, and practiced stand-up comedy around his neighborhood as an escape from a hostile community. He began performing stand-up and talking dirty at comedy clubs at the age of ten, describing his appeal as having disgustingly dirty material on a 10-year-old kid". Shai eventually found an agent on his own through the Yellow Pages, being taken on after auditioning his stand-up act for his agent and pretending to be his own manager, promoting himself in the third person.

Moving on to acting, Shai says he initially became an actor because his family was broke, not because he wanted to be an actor. His first claim to fame was when he became well known among young audiences after playing Louis Stevens in the Disney Channel weekly program 'Even Stevens', a role for which he was cast three months after being signed by his agent.

Shia moved on to act in another Disney Channel hit 'Tru Confessions' where he plays a mentally challenged kid with a sister who made a documentary about his disablity. During filming his father was just released from rehab and served as his on-set parent and the two eventually bonded after having been distanced for so long.

Shia was also awarded a Daytime Emmy Award for the role of Louis in Tru Confessions and says that he grew up fast on that show and that his childhood was kind of lost, although he admits that being cast in the show was the best thing that has happened to him.

In 2003, Shia appeared in another Disney movie, Holes, as Stanley "Caveman" Yelnats IV, with Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight and Tim Blake Nelson.During the filming of Holes, Jon Voight gave Shia a book on acting and this made Shia believe acting might be more than just a job. The film was a moderate box office success but an even bigger success in the DVD rental market. Steven Spielberg was also a fan of Shia in Holes, saying he reminded him of a young Tom Hanks.

Shia was busy in 2003 also appearing in the HBO documentary show Project Greenlight, the Ben Affleck produced show which chronicled the making of the independent film The Battle of Shaker Heights. He also appeared in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle as Max Petroni, an orphan whom the Angels end up protecting.

In 2006, Shia co-starred in the ensemble film drama Bobby, which called for him to do his first nude scene when he strips naked while on an LSD trip. Trying to break from all the Disney-type characters he played in the past, Shia says he really isn't the "All-American Disney role model" and chose to appear in some of his film roles in order to curse as much as possible and make himself as old as possible publicly after his Disney roles."Disney is great and all and a nurturing place but dehabilitating for an actor being one constant string of same", he says. He has also said that he enjoyed being a child actor but hated school for some reason.

2007 gave us Shia starring in 'Disturbia', a thriller released on April 13. In this movie he plays a teenager under house arrest who suspects that his neighbor, played by David Morse, is a serial killer. The film was theatrical hit and Shia received positive reviews for his role Kurt Loder of MTV writes that Shia "gets his star ticket decisively punched", and the San Francisco Chronicle noting that Shia is "fast becoming the best young actor in Hollywood".

Also in 2007, Shia was the voice in the super popular animated film 'Surf's Up' as Cody Maverick and also played teenager Sam Witwicky, who becomes involved in the Autobot-Decepticon war on Earth, in 'Transformers', released summer 2007. Shia says he was always a fan of The Transformers television series and the 1986 'Transformers: The Movie'. Executive producer Steven Spielberg cast him in the role having been impressed by his performance in Holes. Shia says Disturbiathe most important film his three 2007 films because it was a character-driven mature role. "I'm trying to break out of the cutesy teenager role a bit now 'cause even though it's lucrative, I like projects that are more challenging".

In 2007, Shia was a presenter at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, and hosted Saturday Night Live in April. The ShoWest convention of the National Association of Theater Owners named Shia 2007's "star of tomorrow". He was also cast to appear in 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull', which began filming in June 2007 for a May 2008 release date. By now Steven Spielberg and Shia have a film relationship and Spielberg cast him in the film, impressed by his performance in Transformers. Shia's next film will be Eagle Eye, a thriller directed by D. J. Caruso (Disturbia) which is currently filming. He has also signed on for two Transformers sequels.

Although Shia's straight (we hear he's dating Rhianna) GSR wouldn't mind having Shia as our BFF, just drop us an email Shia...

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