By Sophia Aguilar –
Not even Shia LeBeouf’s mom would talk to him after his reputation was garbaged by a woman who alleged he recklessly gave her venereal disease. His public drunkenness and arrogance had cut him off from the movie industry.
Then he was given one last chance to redeem himself and his career at a Capuchin monastery.
“I felt totally depraved when I walked in,” Shia says. “My life was on fire. I was walking out of hell. I didn’t want to be an actor anymore and my life was a mess. I’d hurt a lot of people and I felt deep shame, deep guilt. I had a yearning to not be here anymore.”
He lived out of his car in the parking lot and shared spiritual conversations with the friars. He was immersing himself in the monastic life in preparation for the role of Padre Pio, but he was also immersing himself in God.
“I had nowhere to go,” he says. “This was the last stop on the train There was nowhere else to go in every sense. I know now God was using my ego to draw me to Him. He was drawing me away from worldly desires.”
Born to “hippie parents” in poverty (his mother was Jewish and his dad used drugs) in Echo Park, CA, Shia turned to performing comedy to escape the hostilities of home. At age 10 he performed at The Improv comedy club, a kid with a filthy mouth, and got an agent as a result.
In the early 2000s, he broke through with the role of Louis Stevens with Disney Channel’s Even Stevens. As Sam Witwicky of Transformers 2007 he pushed into the A-list of Hollywood’s elite.
But with the nonstop roles, he acquired an unsavory bad boy image. He got arrested for drunken escapades. His girlfriend FKA Twigs sued him for “relentless abuse,” sexual battery, assault, and infliction of emotional distress.
He himself admitted to being “a pleasure-seeking, selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate, fearful human being” and expressed regret for his actions,
He didn’t know how to stop the erratic behavior that was destroying his credibility with fans and the industry. He came to end of the road. No more acting job offers were coming. Not even his mom would talk to him.
“My mother didn’t want nothing to do with me,” Shia recalls. “The news that had come out has been I’ve been abusive to women and been shooting dogs and I’ve been willingly giving women STDs. It was disgusting and depraved. And my mother is embarrassed beyond all imagination.”
Then on his Zoom 12-step program support group, there was a director who was looking to cast Padre Pio. He would have to immerse himself in the role by going and living with friars in northern California, some of whom had actually known Padre Pio, the mystic from WWI era.
It was more than just the salvation of his career. It was the salvation of his souls.
The friars didn’t give a fig that he was famous. They treated him as a brother among brothers. The spiritual connection impacted Shia. “I was met with nothing but grace,” he says. “I fell in love with Christ.”
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