At age 10, LaBeouf performed stand-up comedy in adult clubs, where alcoholic drinks reportedly had to be removed from tables while the minor was onstage.
He recalled that his circus-performer father trained a chicken named Henrietta Lafowl to jump through flaming hoops.
In 2012, LaBeouf appeared in Artist Alley at Chicago’s C2E2 convention to sell self-published independent comics.
For the 2014 performance project #METAMARATHON, he ran 144 laps around Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in purple athletic wear, accompanied at times by members of the public.
His 2015 project #ALLMYMOVIES involved sitting through 27 of his films in reverse chronological order over roughly 60 hours at New York’s Angelika Film Center; admission was free and his reactions were livestreamed.
The viral ‘Just Do It’ speech was not originally a standalone motivational video. It came from #INTRODUCTIONS, a Central Saint Martins student collaboration, and was devised by art student Joshua Parker as a satire of corporate fitness messaging.
LaBeouf completed the screenplay that became Honey Boy while in rehabilitation. The title was his father’s nickname for him, and an early version listed the invented name Otis Lort as a co-writer.