Shia LaBeouf found religion playing a saint in new movie: 'God was using my ego to draw me to Him'
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Shia LaBeouf experienced a religious awakening making his new film Padre Pio.
In a nearly 90-minute conversation with Bishop Robert Barron of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, the actor opened up about how his beliefs changed while working on the upcoming film, in which he plays the titular Franciscan Capuchin friar.
LaBeouf spoke candidly about his mental space after the tumultuous last few years of his life, in which he was involved in several public scandals, including being sued by former girlfriend FKA twigs for sexual battery and emotional distress.
"I had a gun on the table. I was outta here," LaBeouf revealed. "I didn't want to be alive anymore when all of 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, you don't want to go anywhere. But I was also in this deep desire to hold on."
LaBeouf, who previously identified as agnostic or atheist, said that in the past his beliefs about control over his own life made it hard for him to believe in God. "When all of my designs failed, when all of my plans went out the window, when my life had led to serious infliction of pain and damage on other people, I threw up my hands like, 'My plans are garbage, and I don't want to be here anymore.' And that was required to enter Pio," he said. "This is why it feels like celestial mathematics. It feels way too coincidental to be a coincidence."
Venice Days
He explained that it all started because he was in a "spiritual program" on Zoom, and another person in this "fellowship of the down-and-outs," as he called it, was Pio director Abel Ferrara. Through these meetings, LaBeouf said Ferrara reached out to him about playing the saint. At the time, the actor admitted he was "nuclear and no one wanted to talk to me, including my mother." He says he saw the outreach as "a miracle."
From there, Ferrara told him about his plans for the film and told the actor he needed to do research at a Catholic seminary. Through this research, he was encouraged to read the Bible and learned to "let go."
"The reach-out had happened for me. I was already there, I had nowhere to go. This was the last stop on the train. There was nowhere else to go, in every sense," LaBeouf said.
"I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him," he continued. "Drawing me away from worldly desires. It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in my car, drive up [to the monastery] if I didn't think, 'Oh, I'm gonna save my career.'"
LaBeouf said that as soon as he got there, though, a "switch happened." "It was like three-card monte. It was like someone tricked me into it, it felt like. Not in a bad way. In a way that I couldn't see it. I was so close to it that I couldn't see it. I see it differently now that time has passed."
Also in the interview, the actor discussed his thoughts on Method acting, prayer, ego, his time working with Capuchin friars, and more.
Padre Pio, which marks LaBeouf's return to acting after stepping away in 2020, will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.
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