Shia LaBeouf – Crawley's Casting Calls

Sam Levine. Freaks And Geeks, TV, 1999-2000. Auditioned for Neil Schweibe, chief freak of the fictional Chippewa, Michigan. “Oh, I love this boy,” Brad Pitt told British GQ magazine after making Fury with him in 2013. “He’s one of the best actors I’ve ever seen. He’s full-on commitment, man. He’s living it like no one else, let me tell you. I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of great actors. He’s one of the best I’ve seen.”Michael Soll, Pee Stains And Other Disasters, 2004. Luckily he avoided being one of two skateboarding and girl-chasing heroes with the worst title of the year.
Michael Soll, Pee Stains And Other Disasters, 2004. Luckily he avoided being one of two skateboarding and girl-chasing heroes with the worst title of the year.
Anton Yelchin, House of D, 2004. A crowded diary meant Yelchin inherited Tommy from LaBeouf in X Filesstar David Duchovny’s writer-director debut. He said he penned the script in six days. “The plot is composed of doofusoid elements,” said Chicago critic Roger Ebert. “You know a movie is not working for you when you sit in the dark inventing new words.”
Ed Speleers, Eragon, 2005. A legendary 180,000 actors – headed by LaBeouf, Alex Pettyfer and Elijah Wood – were beaten to the title rolean unknown, still a boarder at Eastbourne College at the time.
Sam Huntingdon, Superman Returns, 2006.
Daniel Radcliffe, December Boys, 2006. LaBeouf was up for the lead but his dance card was too full with the double whammy of Disturbia and Transformers. Freddie Highmore, 13, quit when his granny was ill, and as his mother was his and Radcliffe’s agent, it was Harry P who joined the shoot on and around South Australia’s Kangaroo Island. He’d been looking for a movie between the fourth/fifth Potterverse tales. “It was a very simple story – very beautiful. And my character Maps is very, very different to Harry, so I knew that would be a challenge for me. I’ve been playing Harry Potter for five years, so it was quite amazing to do something different. Hopefully people will see me in a new light after this.” They did.
Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2006.
Ben’s kid brother won because New Zealand director Andrew Dominik thought LaBeouf was too young – the very reason he was winning all his Spielberg movies. Disturbia, Transformers, Eagle Eye, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull. “I grew up with this idea, if you got to Spielberg, that’s where it is,” LaBeouf told Variety in 2016. He was not talking about money or fame, but a screen legacy. Innstead, he found that DreamWorks scripts were not letting him grow as an actor… “You realise you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of. You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a fucking company Spielberg’s sets are very different. 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. I don’t like the movies that I made with Spielberg. The only movie that I liked that we made together was Transformers 1.”
Emile Hirsch, Speed Racer, 2007. Also close to occupying Speed’s driving seat: Labeouf, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The problem was the director. He kept changing. From British Julien Temple to Mexico’s Alfonso Cuarón Cuarón to Gus Van Sant. Finally, the Wachowski siblings voted Zac Efron before signing Hirsch, a long time fan of the 1967-1968 Japanese anime series series.
James Franco, 127 Hours, 2009. LaBeouf was on Irish director Danny Boyle’s list – with Cillian Murphy and Sebastian Stan – for Aron Ralston, an arrrogant US climber who had to saw off his own arm when trapped in a Utah mountain for the titular five-and-a-bit days in 2003.
Bradley Cooper, The Dark Fields, 2010. Lost: an opportunity to co-star with Robert De Niro.
Bradley Cooper, Limitless, 2010. Shia was a shoo-in for Eddie – the nobody rising to dizzyfinancial heights due to a designer pharmaceutical called NZT – until badly injuring his left hand in a July 2008 car smash.
James Franco, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, 2010. “The movie you may have been expecting,” said Chicago critic Roger Ebert. “No less, no more.” In an attempt to relaunch the Fox franchise, Shia and Toby Maguire were also in the mix for Will Rodman – a tribute to the first Apes scenarist Rodman (aka Rod) Serling.
Ryan Reynolds, Safe House, 2011. All the other new guys – Zac Efron,Jake Gyllenhaall, Garret Hedlund, Taylor Kitsch, James McAvoy, Chris Pine, Channing Tatum, Sam Worthington – also angledto be the freshman CIA babysitterhaving to rescue Denzel Washington from an attacked safe house in the Hollywood debut of Swedish director Daniel Espinosa.
Jeremy Renner,The Bourne Legacy, 2011. Three was enough for Matt Damon. (Until 2015…!) The studio did not agree and kept the franchise alive by rebooting Jason Bourne as Aaron Cross – “There Was Never Just One.” But who to play him from 20 hopefuls- Erryn Arkin, Adam Brody, Dominic Cooper, Paul Dano, Luke Evans, Michael Fassbender, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Hartnett, Garrett Hedlund, Oscar Isaac (he was made an Outcome super-agent), Taylor Kitsch, Shia LaBeouf, Kellan Lutz, Logan Marshall-Green, Alex Pettyfer, Michael Pitt and Benjamin Walker. Plus Joel Edgerton and Tobey Maguire, who were Great Gatsbying down-under. Renner, Hollywood’s new white hope since The Hurt Locker, 2009, was suggested for the Mission: Impossible.. if ever Tom Cruise retired.
Martin Freeman, The Hobbit trilogy, 2011.
Logan Lerman, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 2011. Writer-producer-directorJohn Hughes was first to buy rights to Stephen Chbosky’s novel. He died in 2009 (at just 59) while penning a dark comedy version for LaBeouf as high school outsider Charlie. Chbosky took over, giving us “the rare pleasure of an author directing his own book, and doing it well,” said Chicago critic Roger Ebert. “No one who loves the book will complain about the movie, and especially not about its near-ideal casting.” Including Harry Potter’s Emma Watson as her first American, Sam.
Daniel Radcliffe, Horns, 2012. As all the entries are not yet in (or ever all made), diffcuit to assess who goes out of his way to make the offest of off-beat movies: LaBeouf or Radcliffe. They were both up for novelist Joe Hill’s creation of Ig. When accused of killing his lover, Ig turns into the Devil… Well, he had these horns growing out of his head. Three years later, Radcliffe was a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man. No, really!
Casey Affleck, Triple Nine, 2013. LaBoeuf had to leave. Hunnam stepped in. Then, he had to go. Enter: Affleck. Joining the corrupt cops blackmailed into an “impossible” heist… which involved killing one of their own.
Zac Eron, The Associate, 2014. When Paramount announced a film of the John Grisham book back in 2009, LaBeouf was the hero Then, Efron took over as star and producer of Adrian Lyne’s first fiilm since Unfaithful in 2001.
Alden Ehrenreich, Rules Don’t Apply, 2014. When Andrew Garfield switched to Martin Scorsese’s Silence, Ehrenreich, La Beouf and Justin Timberlake were on director Warren Beatty’s list for the driver in the Howard Hughes movie that was not a Howard Hughes movie but a love story treatise on American sexual puritanism. Oh, really!? Beatty also said the film is Titanic and Hughes was the iceberg. (Well, it certainly sank!). Alden Ehrenreich became the new (young) Han Solo; another gigantic flop. What Beatty gave us is a cinematic Spruce Goose. It takes off but never really flies.
Scott Caan, Rock the Kasbah, 2014. An unfunny Bill Murray is a sleazy “talent manager,” running a USO tour of Afghanistan – guarded by Bruce Willlis. La Beouff wisely passed his idiotic weapons dealer to Caan. The web’s Flick Filosopher MaryAnn Johanson was furious. “This is everything that is wrong with Hollywood in a single movie.”
Miles Teller, Arms and the Dudes, 2015. Long time in the planning and even then, director Todd Phillip’s lost his 20-something stoner buddies involved in a $300m arms deal – Hill and Shia Labeouf.
Scott Eastwood, Suicide Squad, 2015. After their Fury, 2014, director David Ayer called on LaBeouf for Lieutenant GQ Edwards – even though he was no longer an A-lister. LaBeouf told Vartiety that the studio vetoed his casting. “I don’t think Warner Bros wanted me. I went in to meet, and they were like, ‘Nah, you’re crazy. You’re a good actor, but not this one.’ It was a big investment for them… The character was different initially. Then, Will [Smith] came in, and the script changed a bit. That character and Tom [Hardy’s] character [played by Joel Kinnaman] got written down to build Will up.”
Armie Hammer,Call Me By Your Name, 2016. A year earlier, producer-director James Ivory announced his adaptation of André Aciman’s novel would star LaBelouf and Greta Scacchi as his teenage gay lover’s mother. Finally, Ivory produced with Sicilian Luca Guadagnino directing Hammer and Amira Casar as Timothée Chalamet’s mother. Result: a record ten-miniute ovation at the New York festival (for Guadagnino and his terrrific acting ensemble) and rapturous reviews for, as New York Times critic Manohla Darghius, called it a ravishment of the senses. And a furious Ivory because Chalamet and Hammer, were never seen fully naked as per the script. “It’s just this American attitude,” he told Variety. Nobody seems shocked about a totally naked woman. It’s the men. Why?”In fact, following an underwear malfunction, Hammer’s balls had to be digitally edited out of view – Chalamet told Yann Barthès on my favourote French talk-show, Quoti!dien.
Spencer Rocco LoFranco,The Life and Death of John Gotti, 2016. According to New York Post, Dominic Cooper (the UK Mama Miastar) was all set to play John Gotti Jr – after Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr, James Franco, Shia LaBoeuf, Jeremy Renner and Channing Tatum withdrew from what was then Gotti: In The Shadow Of My Father. Canada’s LoFranco was perfect for Travolta… unknown, far from A Lists or stealing movies. While Juniors, writers, directors and years sped by, John Travolta remained literally The Teflon Don as Gotti Sr, was known when the untouchable head of New York’s Gambino Mafia family. When the film finallyopened in June, 2018,Gotti was rapidly sleeping with the fishes, roasted by critics and was hit – as in mob hit – by the public, scoring a mere $1.6m opening weekend. Not the first but the biggest disaster of Travolta’s switchback career.
Tye Sheridan, The Card Collector, 2020. Shedules, schedules! They always get in the way. And so, LaBeouf had to quit the Paul Schrader project, produced by Martin Scorsese – their fifth partnershjp after Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ , etc., Nicolas Cage (who starred in their Bringing Out the Dead) suggested his Joe so-star Sheridan take over as the vulnerable and angry Cirk, determined to take revenge on a military colonel.
Oscar Isaac, Moon Knight, TV, 2022- Ross Marquand (Aaron in The Walking Dead), rapper Daveed Diggs, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Nick Kroll, Shia LaBeouf, Pedro Pascal, Max Theriot, even ex-wrestler turned comicbook writer CM Punk were all in the mix for the Marvel Batman – except ex-CIAgent Mark Spector has super powers from the Ancient Egyptian Moon God Khonsu, it says here. Give me Bruce Wayne any day.

Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 27