At the beginning of the year, Shia LaBeouf was making headlines, as he seems to do every few weeks throughout the year. Reports had been coming in from the set of David Ayer‘s “Fury” that the unpredictable actor’s method technique had become so extreme that he had alienated his co-stars to such a degree that he was moved to a separate bed and breakfast away from the rest of the cast. Among his rumored transgressions was refusing to shower and pulling his own tooth out. But as “Fury” gears up to hit cinemas in a few weeks, the biggest star of “Fury” is giving LaBeouf some lavish praise.
Speaking With GQ UK, Brad Pitt is unequivocal with his feelings on LaBeouf: “Oh, I love this boy. He’s one of the best actors I’ve ever seen,” Pitt stated. “He’s full-on commitment, man. He’s living it like no one else, let me tell you. I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of great actors. He’s one of the best I’ve seen.”
But with genius comes madness, and Pitt reveals how LaBeouf and co-star Scott Eastwood nearly got in a fight on set. “We were driving down the road, I’m in the turret, Shia is at the other turret, and Scott is on the back, spitting [tobacco] juice. And I’m starting to get pissed off, I’m starting to get hot, because this is our home, he’s disrespecting our home, you know? So I said, in the scene with the cameras rolling, ‘You’re going to clean that shit up,’ ” Pitt explains. “Shia clocks it, and you have to understand, we’ve been through severe boot camp already, we’ve been through a lot in this tank. Shia saw it and felt the same —he’s disrespecting our home. So Shia had the same reaction I did and started having some words… then I had to get in after the cameras were rolling and explain it to Scotty, you know… the funny thing is, when we got home at the end of the day and read the script, it said Scotty’s character is ‘chewing tobacco and spitting it on the back of the tank’. He was just doing as instructed in the script! So we were the knobs in the end…”
So that’s an honest admission by the veteran actor, but it should be noted this isn’t the first time LaBoeuf has rankled co-stars. When he shot John Hillcoat‘s “Lawless,” the actor admitted that his intensive work ethic had Mia Wasikowska ready to walk from the movie. It’s something the actress previously said is “absolutely true,” and speaking recently with Huffington Post, she elaborated on her experience with LaBeouf.
“He’s a very method actor, and so I was on the receiving end of the method,” the actress said. “You meet so many different people, and sometimes you connect with them and you share that you have a similar approach and sometimes you don’t, and you just have to let them do their thing and hope it doesn’t affect you too deeply.”
So, it sounds she got something out of the experience, even it was unpleasant. And we’ll be able see the result of LaBeouf’s commitment to his craft when “Fury” opens on October 17th.