For all of his wild attempts to convince the world he’s weird, one of the biggest questions surrounding Shia Labeouf has always been “why does this guy keep getting work?” I’ve never thought he was bad per se, but I’ve also never seen anything and thought “you know what’d make this better? If Shia Labeouf was in it.” And yet he seems to be in every other movie.
But if anyone can offer a strong counterpoint, it’s Brad Pitt, who worked with Labeouf on the upcoming WWII tank movie, Fury, from Training Day writer/End of Watch director David Ayer, which opens October 17th. Pitt offers high praise for Labeouf in the new issue of British GQ, by which I mean he must’ve been super high. Maybe Lebeouf is like one of those fighters who’s a beast in the gym but chokes on fight night?
Pitt applauds LaBeouf’s performance in Fury. “Oh, I love this boy. He’s one of the best actors I’ve ever seen. He’s full-on commitment, man. He’s living it like no one else, let me tell you,” the actor raves. “I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of great actors. He’s one of the best I’ve seen.” [EOnline]
“Committed” is certainly a good word for it. That’s also the word you use to describe people who become a danger to themselves. Here’s another fun anecdote from the set:
“We were driving down the road, I’m in the turret, Shia is at the other turret, and Scott [Eastwood] is on the back, spitting 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 s–t up.’ 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,” the actor, 50, tells the magazine. “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.”
Eastwood, however, was simply doing his job. “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,'” Pitt explains. “He was just doing as instructed in the script! So we were the knobs in the end.” [EOnline]
Another headline I could’ve used for this story, “Guy Who Didn’t Read The Script For A Movie He Stars In Thinks Shia Labeouf Is A Great Actor.”
“I did a ton of preparation for this role – rode around in a tank, crawled through the mud, climbed over some barriers, and I even read my lines in the parts of the script that I’m in. It’s one of the toughest things I’ve ever done.”