Audience: Last March, you became a father for the first time. Does this help you in your healing process?
Shia Labeouf : Yes, without a doubt. I am no longer quite the same but I admit that the path is still strewn with pitfalls. I have already done a lot of work on myself. Before, each of my days began by taking up arms. Today my day starts by putting them down and raising my arms. I capitulate before even looking for trouble.
“My father used heroin and drank”
Do you fear relapses?
Yes, and that scares me. I have a disease, like cancer. Doubts ? Yes, I still have. Fortunately, I am surrounded by people who fit me well. I got that my worst enemy is myself… not the others!
What role model was your father for you?
The worst ever. Let’s be honest: he ruined my life. He was both a driving force and a brake on my development. His past as a soldier in Vietnam has completely messed him up. To evacuate all that, he used heroin and drank. Home has long been a battleground. With my mother, we received a lot of beatings.
Exactly, you wrote the film Honey Boy, released in 2019, inspired by your relationship!
Yes. It was during court-ordered rehab. I understood on the spot that writing would allow me to delve into my soul. It was a way of getting to know myself. As if I was leafing through my own skin. Back home, I read everything I had written. I then realized that all these notes looked like a script. It’s ironic: it’s by writing the story of a guy who destroys himself that I was able to rebuild myself.
Looking back, why did you make this film?
I was at the bottom of a hole and the best way to get out of it was to tell where and what I had been through. At the beginning, I said to myself that I was going to help people who suffer from psychological disorders but, in fact, my approach was purely selfish, it was me that I wanted to help above all. honey boy was a form of therapy.
You suffer from post-traumatic stress. What is hard to heal?
When I was 3 years old, my father placed the barrel of his gun on my forehead. It leaves traces. Six years later, my mother was sexually assaulted. I was a kid. I could not do anything. Powerless. At the same age, I was jailed for six hours for stealing a pair of Nike Cortez from a store. The second time, when I was 11, I picked up a Game Boy game from a supermarket. It got me another six hours behind bars. I would have preferred to enumerate other more positive, more constructive facts, but my youth is a huge waste. Especially since at 20, I went back to jail after trying to stab my neighbor!
Do you feel like you were a child like any other?
Yes, but in an environment that was anything but banal. I started acting when I was 10 years old. I felt isolated in my own family and, to make matters worse, I was an only child. I’ve never had a problem with being alone. When I was younger and filming, I wasn’t a lonely kid. I had lots of friends. I was surrounded. Obviously, I’m more alone now than I was when I was 13 or 14. I admit it, I missed my dad for years. Sometimes I was in the room with him but he didn’t see me. He was present physically but, in his head, he was elsewhere. That’s the problem with drug addicts. It wasn’t until later, once we got sober, that we could start hugging each other.
“Recently, I spent a fortune in diamonds”
Hollywood has therefore been a benefactor!
This job saved me by diverting me from a whole bunch of other harmful things. My relationship with the cinema has been the most faithful and the most lasting that I have had so far. This industry has been most generous to me. It was my personal and family environment that disturbed me to the point of tripping.
If a producer offered you 25 million to replay in Transformers, what would you answer him?
It would depend on the script! One thing is certain, it would not be for a question of money. I never worked for money. If I make films, it’s to move people. I am not someone who calculates or plans. I walk on instinct.
Nor can you hide the fact that money has enabled you to extricate yourself from your social milieu.
Yes ! Money means freedom and options. More options. What is undeniable is that it must be spent in order to procure happiness. Recently, I wasted a few thousand dollars so that seventy kids could go to the movies! I also went to a store recently and, who knows why, I spent a fortune on diamonds.
Today, what do you take to fall asleep?
A verbena with melatonin!
Key dates
1. June 11, 1986
Birth in Los Angeles of a professional clown father and a mother, a jewelry designer. He started acting at the age of 10 in various series.
2. 1995
1995 At age 9, he was arrested for stealing sneakers. Over the following years, ten other arrests will follow, the last of which dates from 2020.
3. 2007
His role as Sam Witwicky in Transformers, directed by Michael Bay, reveals it to the general public.
4. 2022
In March, the actor and his girlfriend Mia Goth became parents for the first time.
See also: Excluded Video: Shia Labeouf sentenced by the New York court!
Interview by Frank Rousseau, in Los Angeles