Soon before Shia LaBeouf’s latest brush with the law, writer Peter Rubin sat down with the young star to discuss his rise to fame, his partying habits—and his past problems. The full story appears in the September 2008 issue of Details (on newsstands Monday, August 5th), and an extended version of the interview will be posted here tomorrow (Wednesday, July 30). Below is an exclusive preview:
The script rarely gets away from LaBeouf. It got away from him in Chicago last November, when a late-night nicotine jones ended in that trespassing charge. (”It was two hotheads,” he says, “one completely in the wrong, one who wasn’t enjoying his job that night, going at it about minuscule bullshit.”) And the glee with which the mainstream news media, itching for a YOUNG ACTOR FLAMES OUT headline, seized on it led to the end of one of his and his father’s longtime bonding rituals. “We would drink together and smoke together,” LaBeouf says, “and it’s just a bad deal. It’s not something that is conducive to being a role model—no iconic actors that I know of have problems like that. And I don’t know how to do it like a gentleman. I don’t know how to have one drink.”
Check back here tomorrow for an extended version of Details’ cover story on Hollywood’s baddest boy.