LaBeouf eventually followed Disney with a lucrative partnership with Steven Spielberg on several projects at DreamWorks–including “Disturbia,” “Transformers” and “Eagle Eye”–as well as Paramount’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” He thought it would be a dream come true, but he had a hard time. “I grew up with this idea, if you got to Spielberg, that’s where it is,” says LaBeouf, who originally wanted roles like Macaulay Culkin’s in the “Home Alone” movies. “I’m not talking about fame, and I’m not talking about money.”
He thought Spielberg would be his ticket to a big-screen legacy. “You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” LaBeouf says. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a f–king company.” (Spielberg declined to comment.)
LaBeouf felt like there was no room to grow as an actor, and that he was stuck. “Spielberg’s sets are very different,” he says. “Everything has been so meticulously planned. You got to get this line out in 37 seconds. You do that for five years, you start to feel like not knowing what you’re doing for a living.”
When LaBeouf completed the recent art project of re-watching his old films, he purposefully got up and left during the second “Transformers,” which was executive produced by Spielberg. “I don’t like the movies that I made with Spielberg,” he says. “The only movie that I liked that we made together was ‘Transformers’ one.”
LaBeouf says he felt the most disappointed by the reception for 2008’s “Crystal Skull.” He doesn’t consider the sequel a success, despite its worldwide gross of nearly $800 million. “I prepped for a year and a half,” LaBeouf says. “And then the movie comes out, and it’s your fault. That sh-t hurt bad.”
Spielberg once told him not to read his own press, but it didn’t seem like practical advice. “There’s no way to not do that,” LaBeouf says. “For me to not read that means I need to not take part in society.” It was easier for actors before the Internet. “The generation previous to mine didn’t have the immediate response,” he says. “If you were Mark Hamill, you could lie to yourself. You could find the pockets of joy, and turn a blind eye to the sh-t over there.”
He kept seeing anonymous comments online from people complaining that between “Transformers,” “Wall Street 2,” and “Crystal Skull,” he had destroyed the ’80s. Whenever a fan asked him for a selfie, he’d replay those thoughts in his head. “I didn’t like going in public, because I had to face my failures constantly,” he says.
It was around this time that he started drinking heavily.