Want a peek into the mysterious mind of Shia LaBeouf? Then look no further than the actor's latest sit-down with Interview magazine.
The 28-year-old actor poses shirtless for the spread, showing off his scruffy beard and buffed-up bod in a series of swoon-worthy shots in addition to dishing on his tumultuous relationship with his father, his ability to find his faith after filming the movie Fury as well as his infamous behavior, which includes a recent arrest at the Broadway play Cabaret.
While LaBeouf may have been compared to actors such as Tom Hanks early in his career, the Lawless star says he always rejected those comparisons. "The guys who I looked up to were far darker," he admits, citing actors such as Gary Oldman, Sean Penn and Joaquin Phoenix as his idols.
LaBeouf, who recalls previously being told by Steven Spielberg that "Tom Cruise never picks his nose in public," shares how he never had a desire to have a squeaky clean image and was instead attracted to the "wounded heroes," citing his tumultuous relationship with his father as the reason for his mentality.
"The guys who I looked up to were guys that my dad looked up to," he shares of his father, who he has previously admitted was a drug dealer. "I looked up to my dad. And he doesn't have a Tom Cruise or a Tom Hanks kind of sensibility. He's in the Mongols biker gang. He's cut from a different kind of fabric, a different sensibility, a Vietnam veteran who came home disgruntled."
Although the former Disney star's relationship with his dad is incredibly complicated, the two have been able forge a unique father-son dynamic, due, in part, to the fact that LaBeouf relies on his father to stir up emotions of anger and grief.
"The only thing my father gave me that was of any value to me is pain. The only time my dad will ever talk to me is when I need him at work," he admits. "He knows to pick up the Skype phone call, and he knows what I'm looking for. It's not to say 'Hey, Dad.' We manipulate each other. We service each other. I use him when I go to work. It's not a real conversation; it's just an excuse to rev up. He's the marionette puppeteer.
"My dad is the key to most of my base emotions," he continues. "My greatest and my worst memories are with my father, all my major trauma and major celebration came from him. It's a negative gift. And I'm not ready to let go of it, because anger has a lot of power. You look at Mel Gibson, you go, 'He knows that there's a lot of magic in that rage that he has.' I've been scared for a long time to let go of the anger that I have."
The thesp, who admits he's "really trying to work on my good-guy now" also confesses that "the only thing I've ever been good at is harnessing the negative in my life."
"The thing with my dad and the Skype call, that's a technique," he explains. "We have an unspoken agreement, a secret. We can't really tell each other that we're manipulating each other, but we both know it. And I love my dad. I'd love to be closer to my dad. But we've got something going on between us that's really valuable to me right now—more valuable to me than having a father. And I financially support his whole lifestyle. I pay him to be my marionette puppeteer.
LaBeouf, who said he's ''never experienced unconditional love from another man,'' also opened up about the positive experience he had while filming Fury and said the flick lead him to find his faith.
"I found God doing Fury," he shares. "I became a Christian man, and not in a f--king bulls--t way—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," he said, citing co-star Brad Pitt as "very instrumental" in his religious transformation.
LaBeouf, who has made numerous headlines over the past year for his bizarre behavior, acknowledges that he's trying to ''reinvent'' himself, albeit "sometimes in very uncalculated behavior."
"I'm not a very intelligent person, and you've got to be a f--king genius to learn from other people's mistakes, because you've got to be a very smart man to learn from your own," he says, admitting he looked like a "drunken buffoon" in NYC prior to his Cabaret arrest, which led him to seek treatment for alcohol addiction.
"You're only as good as your last thing, and I'm only thinking about the next thing," he muses. "I've been a runner my whole life, running from myself. Whether to movies or drinking and drugging or f--king calamity 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 have to actually look at myself or be faced with my s--t or take responsibility. So it's been an eye-opening thing to have to look at myself, at my life, and have these reflective moments."