Everybody’s favorite actor from 2007, Shia LaBeouf, has announced that he has converted religions after his most recent role in Padre Pio.
LaBeouf was a child star on Disney’s Even Stevens, before eventually making his way into the big blockbuster world of Michael Bay’s Transformers. Born Jewish, and even submitting an essay to a book titled I Am Jewish, he then later converted to Christianity in 2014. Why? Because he “found God” while making the American-English war film Fury in 2014.
Seven years later, LaBeouf has now ticked another religion off his checklist, with the star confirming that he has converted to Catholicism after yet another film role lead to a spiritual awakening. Speaking on Word on Fire with Catholic Ministries’ Bishop Robert Barron, he revealed his latest awakening. Yes, it’s because of another movie.
LaBeouf said that he was in a dark place, contemplating ending his life and saying he “had a gun on the table” before filming his new film Padre Pio.
“I had a gun on the table. I was outta here, 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.”
He then elaborated saying all these events led him to eventually getting to a monastery after realising “God was using” his ego to draw him.
“The reach-out had happened. 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, I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him. 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.'”
Best of luck to Shia, who has gone down some seriously dark times in his life, and is also alleged to have caused considerably dark times in other peoples’ lives. LaBeouf is currently partnered with Mia Goth, with the duo parenting a child born in 2021.