"People say, 'What are you doing for your 21st birthday, Shia?,' and I'm like, 'I'm making an Indiana Jones movie.' What's better than that?" Shia LaBeouf tells Vanity Fair senior articles editor Michael Hogan, explaining that he won't partake in the usual celebratory drinking. "I won't have a sip until after Indy," he says.
LaBeouf, the child of a hippie mother and a professional-clown father who sold drugs on the side, tells Hogan that he really bonded with his father during a time when his dad agreed to take the job as on-set parent while Shia (then a minor) was filming the television show Even Stevens. "That's where we became best friends. I went to A.A. meetings with him all the time."
LaBeouf tells Hogan he doesn't like going to clubs. "To say that I've never had a drink or smoked weed--coming from my family--is insane. But also, I know what it does if you get out of control. I know how hard it was to get my life to where it is. There's so much riding that those small little joys of the high are not interesting to me."
LaBeouf tells Hogan that after getting the call informing him that Spielberg wanted to meet with him he was nervous for the entire week, thinking, What did I do now? Then at the meeting, "When he mentioned Indiana Jones, I was about to have a heart attack. I couldn't breathe. And then he told me not to tell anyone. It's like winning the Super Bowl but you can't tell anyone you won the Super Bowl for three months!" says LaBeouf.
Of his time on the set with Spielberg, LaBeouf says, "I remember saying, 'I'm the least likely person to be here,' and Steven said, 'You and me both. I never wanted to make another one of these. We ended the series perfectly.' That scares me, as a fan and as the actor who's doing it. But Steven said he wouldn't have made this movie if the script wasn't right."
Rumor has it that Spileberg is developing another project for LaBeouf already, but for now he's focused on Indiana Jones. "It's a lot of pressure," LaBeouf says, "but that's the way I want it, man. I prayed for this pressure. This is willed."
The August issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on July 5 and nationally on July 10.