Shia Who?

Who is Shia LaBeouf (and why should you care)? He's Hollywood's New It kid, and he'll be in Indy 4 with Harrison Ford on May 22. To me, I could see Shia LeBeouf becoming the next Tom Hanks or John Cusack. It's not that he's that gorgeous, although he is filling out, but it's the charm and the fast talking that I like. He's just damn talented, and I can see him really going places.

He starred in Even Stevens as a child on Disney Channel, and won an Emmy for it. But I first saw him in Holes. My son loved the book so I was dragged to the movie which was a much better than average kids film. I could tell even then in his first feature film, that he had acting chops and that snarky John Cusack type attitude. He had minor roles in I, Robot and Constantine, but his breakthrough role was in Disturbia. The film is sort of teen Rear Window, and he spends a lot of the movie alone on screen -- and he carries the movie.

From the Variety cover article about Shia last year:

Ever since Disturbia paid for itself with a $22 million opening weekend, there’s been talk that Shia LaBeouf might just be the next big thing. (The name’s pro­nounced shy-a La-buff.) His charisma helped the movie survive the inevitable Hitchcock comparisons, which is how director D. J. Caruso planned it: “I basically said, ‘I want John Cusack. Girls will like him because he’s smart and witty and gets cuter the more you watch him, and also guys like him because he’s cool and he can be dangerous.’ Shia was perfect.”

Caruso sent LaBeouf’s audition tape to his friend Steven Spielberg, one of the film’s executive producers. “Steven loved it,” Caruso says, enough so that he had LaBeouf read for another DreamWorks picture: Trans­formers, the $145 million summer blockbuster from director Michael Bay. Again, he nailed the leading role—this time as Sam Witwicky, who teams up with an 18-wheeler named Optimus Prime to save the earth from invading Decepticons. “The girls in my office were like, ‘He’s not that cute. Don’t hire him,’ ” says Bay. “They just wanted a hunk in the movie. And I said, ‘Ladies, watch the audition tape.’ They saw the tape and instantly went, ‘Oh my God, he’s great. He’s so funny.’ And that’s what it is. It’s just charm.” If Transformers, which opens this month, performs as expected, it will be LaBeouf’s second No. 1 movie this year.

After Disturbia and Transformers, Spielberg was ready to add LaBeouf to his all-star team. Based on an idea by George Lucas and starring Harrison Ford, the Indiana Jones trilogy—beginning with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark and ending, or so it seemed, with 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade—is one of Spielberg’s signature creations, on a par with Jaws and E.T. Last winter, he finalized his plan for a new sequel, featuring LaBeouf. “I think what Steven really likes about Shia is his endearing quality,” Caruso says. “He calls it a Tom Hanks quality, where he’s this great actor and you want to root for him.”

LaBeouf shrugs this off, saying he gets compared to “any dark-haired actor who wasn’t an Adonis, basically: Tom Hanks, John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman. It has nothing to do with performance; it’s just a visual categorization.” But Jon Voight, who has acted with LaBeouf in the 2003 Disney hit Holes and in Transformers, thinks the analogy fits: “There’s never another one of these unique guys, but he’s a unique guy that is going to have a long career. Why do people say Tom Hanks? Because Tom is not a standard leading man, or doesn’t seem to be. He has great charm, great humor, and he’s a real actor. And all those things would describe Shia as well.”

O.K., but there are thousands of talented actors in L.A., many of them a lot handsomer than LaBeouf. Why has DreamWorks made him, as Caruso puts it, “their Mickey Mouse”? The answer may lie in his unique upbringing. “His dad basically was a grifter,” Caruso says. “His mom is this really cool hippie. This is a guy who from a very young age was basically the father figure in his own life and took care of his mother. He was an old soul at age 19.”

Watch Shia on Letterman last year right before Transformers came out, and you'll get a taste of what he's like. Transformers was only watchable because of Shia, to me. My husband teases me because I like him. Yes, he is young, but he's legal as he's now 21! (I am going to hell ...) He's just charming and funny. Can't wait to see how his career plays out.