When it comes to Hollywood jerks, Shia LaBeouf ranks among the best (or worst) of them.
The one-time happy-go-lucky star of Even Stevens, Holes, and Transformers had, in recent years, torched his reputation with a series of volatile incidents and allegations — drunken, disorderly conduct; petty theft and battery; abusive behavior; DUI.
He found himself — like all of us at one point or another — at rock bottom.
And then . . . the opportunity to appear in a biopic of Franciscan Capuchin friar Padre Pio appeared out of the blue. The part was a way to rejuvenate his bungled career, nothing more. And he was desperate.
“I had a gun on the table. I was outta here,” LaBeouf remembered in a captivating 90-minute interview with Bishop Robert Barron. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore when all this happened. Shame like I had never experienced before — the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe. You don’t know where to go. You can’t go outside and get like, a taco.”
What happened next surprised everyone — not least of whom was Shia LaBeouf.
After spending months learning from priests and friars at San Lorenzo Seminary in Santa Ynez, Calif. — LaBeouf was living out of his truck in the parking lot — in what had started as mere film prep, LaBeouf found himself drawn towards the Faith.
“It was seeing other people who have sinned beyond anything I could ever conceptualize also being found in Christ that made me feel like, ‘Oh, that gives me hope,’” LaBeouf recounts in his interview with Bishop Barron. “I started hearing experiences of other depraved people who had found their way in this, and it made me feel like I had permission.”
Now, he has swum the Tiber to Rome.
Thank God for redemption and hope — and that they’re open to us all.
Welcome to the club, brother Shia.