Volatile actor Shia LaBeouf has been cast to play an early 1900s Catholic saint, only half a year after he reportedly took a break from acting in response to allegations of abusing women.
On Thursday, Director Abel Ferrara told Variety that he had cast LaBeouf to star as Italian Saint Padre Pio, a Catholic leader who attained sainthood for his life’s work in the years after the end of World War I.
The director, famed for helming controversial films including Bad Lieutenant, hopes to begin filming his Saint project in October, but he does not seem to have commented on LaBeouf’s legal troubles. LaBeouf has also avoided any comment on the role, according to The Daily Beast.
Just six months ago, LaBeouf left his talent agency CAA, reportedly to take a break from acting while he sought treatment for substance abuse and fought off allegations of abuse and violence from several women.
In December of 2020, LaBeouf’s ex-girlfriend, FKA Twigs, whose real name is Tahliah Barnett, filed a lawsuit alleging that LaBeouf “relentlessly abused” her during their relationship. She also said he knowingly gave her a sexually transmitted disease.
Twigs has delivered a long list of allegations, including that he mentally and physically abused her, that he threatened her with a gun, and that he even once locked her in a room when she told him she was leaving him.
She even claims that LaBeouf claimed that to prepare for his role in the movie The Tax Collector, he drove around L.A. at night and shot at stray dogs.
Hollywood stylist Karolyn Pho has also lodged allegations of abuse against LaBeouf. Pho has claimed that LaBeouf beat her up in a hotel room in 2021 and threatened to kill her in 2011.
“For too long, LaBeouf has sought to excuse his reprehensible actions as the eccentricities of a free-thinking ‘artist,'” Pho’s lawsuit claims.
Even though his history of violent behavior was well documented, many in the media have treated LaBeouf as a harmless figure of fun, which has helped enable him to perpetuate his cycle of abuse of women over the years. There is nothing funny about the exploitation of and battering of women. This action has been brought not for personal gain, but to set the record straight, and to help ensure that no more women must undergo the abuse that Shia LaBeouf has inflicted on his prior romantic partners.
LaBeouf has been known for off-screen misbehavior for many years now.
Late last year, for instance, the Transformers star pleaded not guilty in an L.A. court after being charged with battery and petty theft over an altercation with a man that occurred in June of 2020.
In April of 2017, the LaBeouf got in a shouting match with a man in an L.A. bowling alley whom LaBeouf accused of being a “fucking racist.” He was thrown out of the establishment over the incident.
Months later, he was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia, and video footage appeared to show him calling a black police officer a “stupid bitch”
LaBeouf reportedly lied to police and claimed to be a U.S. Army veteran whiling being arrested for public intoxication in Austin, Texas, in 2015.
LaBeouf spent much of the Trump era criss-crossing the country and delivering anti-Trump tirades. In 2017, for instance, LaBeouf was arrested while participating in his anti-Trump exhibit at a museum in New York.
That same year his anti-Trump exhibit in a New York museum was shut down due to violence. And in 2017, LaBeouf was arrested for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and obstruction. And while being fingerprinted at the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, LaBeouf said a one of the black officers is going “straight to hell” because he is black and a police officer.
The Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull star later oddly blamed his arrest on “white privilege.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.