Growth spurt

Shia LaBeouf, who spent much of his youth working as a child actor, is striving to prove he's all grown up.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 18, 2007

AUSTIN, Texas - Shia LaBeouf is in the position so many former child actors have found themselves in: that murky area between boyhood and manhood, between cute and commanding.

And he's impatient for it to be over.

"I want to get bigger. I'm sick of being a boy," the lanky actor says of his recent regimen of running and working out. "I know that there's this innocence that I have, but I feel like I've played that guy. The whole goal for me has been diversity and diversifying your portfolio and making sure you do a whole bunch of different things and you don't get typecast. If I become a type, my career is over.

"I want to be an intimidating presence. I want to be a ... killer."

Strong words from the former star of the Disney Channel series Even Stevens, which earned him a Daytime Emmy in 2003. Since then, though, LaBeouf has put together an eclectic filmography for a 20-year-old.

He has appeared opposite Will Smith (I, Robot) and Keanu Reeves (Constantine) and has played a wrongly accused juvenile prisoner (Holes), a drugged-out campaign worker (Bobby) and a would-be thug (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints).

This year alone he stars in the thriller Disturbia, a high-tech teen update of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window; the big-screen version of Transformers; and the animated Surf's Up, in which he provides the voice of a surfing penguin.

And then there are those persistent Internet rumors that he has signed on to play Indiana Jones Jr. in the fourth installment of Steven Spielberg's franchise.

"The way that thing started, it's just wild how it snowballed," he says between bites of a cheeseburger and fries at the South by Southwest Film Festival, where Disturbia screened before its April 13 release.

"I don't have a deal on the table, it's just a rumor. Would I do it? In a second."

LaBeouf hasn't been out of work much since he flipped through the Yellow Pages looking for an agent as a 10-year-old; he was cast as the precocious Louis Stevens that year. Growing up as one of the few white kids in Los Angeles' heavily Hispanic Echo Park section, LaBeouf started doing standup comedy. He's quick to admit he was drawn to this profession for creative and financial reasons.

"I grew up on (Even Stevens), and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Took me out of my house; it was real dramatic at that time," he says. "My dad was on drugs - heroin and all kinds of wild (stuff), and he was in a rehab facility. My mom was trying to hold down the fort, and that wasn't working. So when the show came along, it was a savior."

Despite having worked steadily for the past decade, LaBeouf insists he isn't famous yet.

LaBeouf wants to fly even farther below the radar by going off to college (he's been accepted at Yale) and experiencing life outside of acting for a while.

"How do you create mystery when they know everything about you?" he says. "You've got to go away. You've got to give them time to not know you."

[Last modified March 18, 2007, 00:43:21]