Over the past decade or so, Shia LaBeouf’s made more headlines for his violent, self-destructive behavior than he has for his acting. In a recent Esquire profile, he apologized for the antics, calling himself “a struggling motherfucker showing his ass in front of the world.” Still, it’s hard to shake his blatantly racist tirade against a Savannah cop last summer. But perhaps there’s answers to be found regarding LaBeouf’s behavior in his childhood, which is being explored in a new biopic, Honey Boy, about the actor from Automatik.
Lucas Hedges, who scored an Oscar nomination for his work in Manchester By the Sea and recently starred in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Lady Bird, will play a teenage LaBeouf in the film, which aims to chronicle the actor’s troubled relationship with his father. LaBeouf will play his father, a hard drinker and former heroin addict who used to work as a clown. A synopsis on the Black List reads thusly: “A child actor and his law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father attempt to mend their contentious relationship over the course of a decade.”
LaBeouf also co-wrote the script under the pseudonym Otis Lort, and documentarian and music video director Alma Har’el will helm the feature. LaBeouf’s last performance of note was 2016’s acclaimed American Honey, though he’ll soon hit the screen again as irate tennis star John McEnroe in Borg McEnroe.
