Shia LaBeouf’s Very Bad Year
Shia LaBeouf has had a spate of very bad years. Especially in light of a recent interview where he revealed that he was raped by an unnamed woman during his art project #IAMSORRY earlier in 2014.
Shia LaBeouf stared out life very poor. He lucked into a role on Disney’s Even Stevens show. Shia transitioned well from childhood star to adult film star, landing a crucial role in the Transformers trilogy, a co-starring role in Indian Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and a few other block busters. LaBeouf seemed to be handling his fame relatively well, unlike multitudes of other childhood stars who flamed out far too quickly.
All too soon, the normalcy came to an end. LaBeouf started racking up arrests for petty incidents; an altercation with a neighbor that was blocking his driveway, LaBeouf rammed the neighbor’s car and later approached him with a knife; refusing to leave a Walgreen’s in Chicago after a security guard asked him to; an auto accident in which Shia was not at fault, but had been drinking resulted in the loss of his drivers license for drunk driving and multiple surgeries related to injuries he sustained in that accident; a fight in a tavern in Los Angeles where LaBeouf was punched in the face; and another altercation at Studio 54 in New York during a performance of Cabaret. Multiple other outbursts and strange behaviors didn’t result in legal action, but raised eyebrows nonetheless.
LeBeouf then started to be scrutinized for plagiarism. As Time reports, it wasn’t just one or two incidents, but a staggering fourteen separate rip-offs ranging from mundane apologies to complex works of art. Perhaps the jewel in this hideous crown was the accusation that LaBeouf plagiarized his short film HowarCantour.com from a novel by Daniel Clowes. LaBeouf admitted guilt on New Years Eve, 2013. An interesting decline began ten days later when LaBeouf announced his retirement from public life. Bizarre comments and behavior continued for the next month until he arrived at the premiere of Nymphomaniac at the Berlin Film Festival wearing a paper bag on his head with eye-holes cut out. Scrawled on the bag were words LaBeouf had been Tweeting repeatedly over the previous month: “I am not famous anymore.”
The following day LaBeouf began what he styled as a piece of performance art at the Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles, #IAMSORRY. The performance would last five days. Visitors stood in line for days. They were offered the option to collect an object from a table — many of them things that were representative of his acting career such as a whip from Indiana Jones, a Transformers toy, a collection of mean Tweets etc.,– and enter the room where they could say whatever they liked to Shia. LaBeouf would say nothing. Occasionally Shia cried. He was also, allegedly assaulted. As the Inquisitr reported, a woman attacked him during her alone time with Shia.
“One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me… There were hundreds of people in line when she walked out with disheveled hair and smudged lipstick. It was no good, not just for me but her man as well. On top of that my girl was in line to see me, because it was Valentine’s Day and I was living in the gallery for the duration of the event – we were separated for five days, no communication. So it really hurt her as well, as I guess the news of it traveled through the line. When she came in she asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful.”
LaBeouf’s collaborators on the project have recently come forward and confirmed LaBeouf’s version of events. For their part, they claim the assault was stopped before it “went too far.” However far it went, it apparently traumatized the LaBeouf. He entered rehab a few months later, and other than a few quirky “marathons,” has been very quiet and removed from the public eye.
