The kick off for this one — an interview with Shia LaBeouf from The Onion’s
A.V. Club on occasion of his starring role in this week’s Disturbia — isn’t mine, but it reminded me of a chat I had with LaBeouf
back when he was making the press rounds for Bobby last fall.

A ways into the Q&A, the interviewer points out LaBeouf’s
candidness and asks if he gets shit from his handlers; LaBeouf responds in the
affirmative, in breezily loquacious style: “Sure, picture this whole room full
of reiner-inners. That’s what their job is, and of course I understand that.
And there’s an aspect to me that sort of wants to do the same. Because if you
don’t rein it in, you start losing mystery and sometimes perception is almost
more important than the skill level of an actor. And if you give too much away,
you have nothing to take for yourself and put onscreen. If people feel like
they know you too well, they won’t be able to identify with the character you’re
trying to portray. Or they’ll feel that you’re just playing yourself, and then
you just become a personality actor. And that’s the death of any actor. So this
[gestures at himself] is a representative. This is far too important a conversation,
it’s far too important, for me to be real with you. It’s just too important to
my career, too important to the things that I love. So this right here is just
this representative I’ve created. And I can talk all day in this character, this
is just another form of acting. It’s closer to what I am, but what I am is too
much for any kind of selling of a project. There’s too much money riding on
this interview going well for me to be completely candid. So it’s just a
creation.”

LaBeouf is a mile-a-minute talker who has a way with shorthand
that seems flippant but really isn’t (on being cast in Bobby: “You’re 20 years old — do you wanna go play for the all-star
team? Sure…”), and he can segue between rat-tat-tat promotion (again on Bobby: “This
is not a liberal movie, it’s not specifically about politics, it’s about
ordinary people following extraordinary man. Here was a man with vision who was
a voice for those who were silenced. This was a great person, and that’s the
gist of what the film is about. It’s about relighting that fire in people that
they can have faith in other people — it’s not politic, it’s about hope”) and blunt
biographical distillation, as during one point in a roundtable chat when he described his dad, a
former roadie with the Doobie Brothers, as “a real-deal hippie who still lives
in a teepee in Montana — still.”

He’s a good interview, in other words — obviously preternaturally
bright, but still bristling with the restless discomfort of youth. The most interesting
moment that I had with him was riding up an elevator, on the way to a hotel
hospitality suite. Making a bit of small talk after our scheduled interview, I finally
asked LaBeouf, with a lolling smile, if he could get quite as excited selling a
movie that he didn’t care about as he was about Bobby. From a savvier veteran, one might expect a pithy parry, or
from a more automaton-like newcomer a wide-eyed exclamation along the lines of,
“I hope I never have to!”

LaBeouf’s immediate response, though, was telling, in that,
as in the above Onion piece, he copped to slipping into character for such interviews
— not a lesser representation of himself, or a totally insincere one, but one
tinged with boosterism, undeniably. He had to play-act as his own advocate. It’s the admission that a lot of actors won’t
(or can’t) make. Think what you will of his on-screen talent, but this acknowledgement
(which helps make him a good, always engaged talk show guest, for one) and LaBeouf’s
overall perspective confirm a pretty astonishing grasp, for someone of his age,
of the difficulties inherent in nurturing and maintaining a film career — and the
privilege of such an endeavor.