Shia LaBeouf is a prolific actor best known for his starring role in the first three Transformers films. As a young actor he became infamous for his wild lifestyle, but his life began to change in 2014 when he encountered Jesus Christ on a filmset.
Fury
Shia was playing the role of Boyd “Bible” Swan, a Christian soldier in the film “Fury”, when he realised that he needed to become like the person he was acting in the movie,
“I found God doing ‘Fury’. I became a Christian man… in a very real way. I could have just said the prayers that were on the page, but it was a real thing that really saved me. And you can’t identify unless you’re really going through it. It’s a full-blown exchange of heart, a surrender of control.”
The dramatic life change came after a particularly bad period where he had public disagreements with fellow actors and was arrested for disturbing the production of ‘Cabaret’. He said,
“I’ve been a runner my whole life, running from myself. Whether to movies or drinking and drugging or whatever it is, I’ve always been running. I’m a dude who loves delusion. It’s why I love being an actor—I never [had] to actually look at myself or take responsibility.”
A supernatural encounter
Fury was directed by David Ayer who is a practicing Christian. Brad Pitt also starred in the film and despite saying that he no longer subscribed to evangelical faith, Shia says that he was also a great help,
“Brad was really instrumental in guiding my head through this. Brad comes from a hyper-religious, very deeply Christian, Bible Belt life, and he rejected it and moved toward an unnamed spirituality. He looked at religion like the people’s opium, almost like a Marxist view on religion, whereas David Ayer is a full subscriber to Christianity.”
Padre Pio
A second deeply spiritual experience happened to Shia ten years later while he was living with Capuchin Franciscan Friars in preparation for his movie role as the Italian saint Padre Pio (2022).
Shia was staying at Old Mission Santa Ines in Solvang, California. Still battling with depression and personal issues which had led him to feel suicidal, he was profoundly impacted by the community of friars. Shia was mentored by Brother Alexander Rodriguez and he credits this experience as the one that finally led him to join the Catholic Church. Traditional liturgy became an anchor and his time with the friars led him to seriously consider exploring ordination. In a viral interview with Andrew Callaghan of ‘Channel 5’ he said that he “found redemption through Christ following severe personal and internal dark periods.” He added that he views Jesus as his “literal saviour and rescuer from self-obsession, addiction and ego.” Shia now identifies as a traditional Catholic. He believes that he experienced “meaningful suffering” during his search for God which was instrumental in helping him to understand the suffering of Christ on the cross. He came to believe that ‘hard-headed individuals’ need to reach a breaking point in order to truly find God.
TV and film work
Shia began his career as a child actor, appearing in small roles on television. His breakthrough came when he was cast as Louis Stevens in the Disney Channel series Even Stevens (2000–2003).
Following his TV work He was given starring roles in Holes (2003), The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), Disturbia (2007), Surf’s Up (2007), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Eagle Eye (2008), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) and Fury (2014). He starred as Sam Witwicky in the first three Transformers films (2007–2011) and later starred in a number of independent films, earning acclimation from film critics for his performances in American Honey (2016), Borg vs McEnroe (2017), Honey Boy (2019), The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019), Pieces of a Woman (2020), and Salvable (2025).
Story by Ralph Burden
Photo: Shia LaBeouf with Megan Fox promoting Transformers in Paris, 2009. License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
