Shia LaBeouf Blames Alec Baldwin's "Weak Ego" for Their Feud
Shia LaBeouf is remembering a time when he was filled with fury. The Transformers alum recently reflected on a challenging experience he had with Alec Baldwin, who he worked with on a play in 2013 after the actor replaced Al Pacino.
Shia admitted that his years of prep work to costar with Al in the stage show, combined with his insecurities about being taken seriously as an actor, laid a difficult foundation for his and Alec’s working relationship.
“By the time Baldwin got there, it was almost unfair,” the 38-year-old told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published May 8. “He’s dealing with both my fractured little weak ego, right? All this hard prep that I’d done for two years, and my desperate need to show him all my prep, or that he would accept me somehow. I was so insecure.”
Shia recalled that, as a result, the pair didn’t get along very well, saying, “That got contentious in the room.” He added, “Then he got competitive.”
He also noted that his and Alec’s differences in working styles fueled the tension between them. “I’d be off book, he’d be on book, and he didn’t want me to look at him be off book,” the Honey Boy actor explained. “That makes it hard to play these scenes out or block this thing even. And no fault against him, he had two weeks to come in because Pacino [dropped out].”
He continued, “I had built the whole thing based on my relationship with Pacino. And that’s gone. So I was kind of heartbroken.”
And while Shia eventually dropped out of the play, he said that he and Alec ended up on good terms after he took an NYU acting class taught by Alec.
“Me and him are good because he’s gone through a lot. I’ve gone through a lot,” Shia told the outlet. “We’ve both been able to send each other love and make it right before all the madness happened on both sides. We made it right. He’s a good guy. He’s just like me.”
He added, “Fear will make you move different. I found it came from having absolutely no spiritual life. It made me a piece of s--t. Not a nice guy.”
Alec previously detailed his perspective on working with Shia around the time of the play.
“There was friction between us from the beginning. LaBeouf seems to carry with him, to put it mildly, a jailhouse mentality wherever he goes,” the 67-year-old told Vulture in 2014. “You could tell right away he loves to argue. And one day he attacked me in front of everyone. He said, ‘You’re slowing me down, and you don’t know your lines. And if you don’t say your lines, I’m just going to keep saying my lines.’”
Alec went on to offer his opinion on why Shia ultimately wound up exiting the play.
“I think he was shocked,” he said. “He had that card, that card you get when you make films that make a lot of money that gives you a certain kind of entitlement. I think he was surprised that it didn’t work in the theater.”