Next project could transform Shia LaBeouf into son of Indy

Shia LaBeouf is in begging mode, practically down on bended knee in whimpering supplication. We speak figuratively, of course, although LaBeouf concedes he prays "every day and night, every breath," which means he mutters prayers when he eats, sleeps, and while you read this.

And what does an ascending young actor pray for with such unswerving devotion? To avoid the rehab peccadilloes of his celebrity peers? A fair guess.

Jack Plunkett
ASSOCIATED PRESS

(enlarge photo)

A former Disney Channel star, Shia LaBeouf plays the lead in 'Disturbia.'

But no, the 20-year-old star of the teen thriller "Disturbia," opening today, yens for greater things, unmatched opportunities, Holy Grails and mountain peaks. In today's Hollywood, that can only mean: Indiana Jones.

When rumors splutter from the collective blabbermouth of showbiz, people latch on and hold tight, partly for fun, partly for prophetic dreaming. Not LaBeouf, who, rumors aver, is being considered by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to play the son of Indiana Jones in the series' fourth installment. LaBeouf has heard the rumor, but quickly swats it down.

"I know as much as the next guy," LaBeouf says, almost stridently. "I haven't been contacted."

He would take the role in a microsecond. "Just to work with Spielberg, a legend, would be insane," he says, eyes wide, speech rapid, hands moving.

On this March day, LaBeouf — first name pronounced Shy-uh, last name La-Buff, mother a Russian-Jewish ballerina, father a Cajun clown — has just arrived in Austin for the screening of "Disturbia" during the South by Southwest Film Festival. He's fit, firm, compact. Noticeably gone is the goofy, boyish bearing he so deftly deployed on the Disney Channel's "Even Stevens," for which he won a Daytime Emmy, and the 2003 feature "Holes," based on the book by Austin author Louis Sachar.

LaBeouf has made it clear that he wants to doff his image as the yeasty young comedian. He wants to be taken seriously and earn the thespian gravitas of idols such as Tom Hanks, Gary Oldman and Dustin Hoffman.

Which might be why his face is a mask of studied sternness. He speaks with a passion to prove himself, fast and assertively. Polite and well-spoken, LaBeouf radiates the willed, self-serious confidence of a Donald Trump contestant. I'm not a kid. I am a professional. Treat me that way.

He has been lifting weights.

"I want to get bigger," LaBeouf told another reporter in Austin. "I'm sick of being a boy. I want to be an intimidating presence. I want to be a . . . killer."

(A killer?)

LaBeouf also wants to play Holden Caulfield, that dark knight of flummoxed adolescence, in a screen version of "The Catcher in the Rye," his favorite book. Meanwhile, he has stretched and grown in grittier adult movies: "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" and "Bobby," in which he plays a thug and a drug addict, respectively.

"It was an astonishing month of my life," LaBeouf says of making "Saints," starring Robert Downey Jr.

"Sometimes you're given a character that gets to emote certain things you want to get out that are trapped inside you. When you're in this shroud of a character you're allowed to do that. You go from one extreme emotion to another and you're able to get it all out. It feels like a huge release when you do a movie like that."

In "Disturbia," LaBeouf returns to playing a contemporary suburban teenager, yet with emotional problems stemming from his father's untimely death in a car wreck (spectacularly staged by director D.J. Caruso).

After punching his Spanish teacher in the face, the boy is sentenced to house arrest. Binoculars become his best friend, as he slakes his boredom spying on various neighbors, including an eccentric single guy (a gruff David Morse), who LaBeouf suspects is a serial killer on the lam from Austin. (In movies, psychos always come from Texas, I tell LaBeouf. "You guys get it rough," he chuckles.)

"I always wanted to make a psychological thriller, not a horror film," LaBeouf says. "That's when the actor gets to have fun. You can play with the audience: Am I crazy or not? Is that the killer or not?"

"Disturbia" straddles genres — teen romance, mystery-thriller — and proudly points to its inspiration, Hitchcock's 1954 classic "Rear Window." The movie has been called everything from skillful homage to bold rip-off.

LaBeouf hates the accusation.

"That's like saying 'The Cincinnati Kid' is 'The Hustler.' They both run on the same engine but they're totally different films," he says. "The minute you start touching things Hitchcock did, you're the Hitchcock rip-off or the Hitchcock spin-off. Our movie's totally different. We're not stealing. The only similarities, when you break it down, is that there may or may not be a killer across the way from a person who's locked in a house."

LaBeouf doesn't shy from arguing. When Indiana Jones is broached, he denies the project even exists, that, like his possible casting, it's but a rumor being bandied and spitballed. He insists there's no script, no casting, that the film is far from being greenlighted.

He's wrong.

(He also insists, with clenched-fist certitude, that J.D. Salinger is dead. We debate this. He doesn't waver. Clearly the young actor relies too much on Wikipedia.)

David Koepp has written an "Indiana Jones 4" script, Spielberg is directing and Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett and Ray Winstone are among the cast. Filming begins in June. (The April 5 issue of Variety reports that LaBeouf is also cast, but added that "no one will even confirm their deals are done.")

LaBeouf has another surefire blockbuster on his mind. He toplines Michael Bay's sci-fi action epic "Transformers," which comes out July 4. Working with Bay, a fiend for explosive destruction, was entirely different from any of LaBeouf's previous films. He refers to Bay as "General Patton," saying the no-nonsense, detail-intensive director "can be a monster when he needs to be."

"On 'Disturbia' we spent a whole day rehearsing the car crash, had lunch, then spent the whole next day shooting the crash," he explains.

"On a Michael Bay set, you're blowing up a building, you have a plane crash, a helicopter falling, three cars lit on fire, men lit on fire, there's a robot walking through the streets. This is all before lunch. And there are no rehearsals."

After "Transformers" splashes down, LaBeouf will attend either Yale University or Cal Arts this fall. But he says he will never stop acting.

"I want to work for as long as possible and do as many different things as possible," he says. "I don't want to stay in one genre or one technique. The goal is to not get categorized, because once you're typecast, you're (bleeped).

"I don't know what I want to be. I'm 20 years old, so I haven't figured it all out."