Shia LaBeouf Quotes

There's no room for being a visionary in the studio system. It literally cannot exist. You give Terrence Malick a movie like Transformers, and he's f***ed. There's no way for him to exist in that world... Lars Von Trier's dangerous. He scares me. And I'm only going to work now when I'm terrified.

If you asked an 18-year-old what they want to do with their life, and the options are 'Transformers' or Lars von Trier, he's probably shipping out for 'Transformers.' If you ask a 26-year-old what he wants to do, 'Transformers' or Lars von Trier, he'd probably pick Lars von Trier. So, my sensibilities are changing as I change.

Old Americana vintage gangster stuff has a fantastical feel; it feels less dirty in a way. It feels like the opera of crime.

I've learned a great deal about a certain type of filmmaking. But I have ambitions toward another type of filmmaking that I haven't been allowed to engage in yet.

My humor came from seeing my parents have sex, smoke weed, my mom being naked - just weird hippie stuff, twisted R-rated humor.

Every actor chooses their story at the beginning.

Animation has completely changed and I've always been a big fan.

Sometimes perception is almost more important than the skill level of an actor. And if you give too much away, you have nothing to take for yourself and put onscreen. If people feel like they know you too well, they won't be able to indentify with the character you're trying to portray. Or they'll feel that you're just playing yourself, and then you just become a personality actor. And that's the death of any actor.

If you're trying to learn how to act from a class, you're analyzing the teachers' movements and their intricacies, and it becomes like a pantomime of you wanting to be them, and that's wrong. Literature is an easier way to study acting, because then you can take any kind of spin. It's your own imagination, and your own version of it.

When a gust of wind hits a broken bone, you feel it.

I'm still in the middle of the transition. I'm still in man-boy mode. And that won't go away for a while. But it's a fun time to be in, because it's very rare that people get to work through this time. It's rare to see a John Cusack in Say Anything. It's rare that you'd find an actor right in the cusp of the child-to adult transition, just got through puberty, just getting into a different way of life. There's few movies like that, and few roles like that, so it's going to be tough to pick and choose. I guess the goal is good people, work with good people.

You can prepare all you want, but if you never roll the dice you'll never be successful.

When you're working with the best of the best, I'm not gonna put that on hold so I can work with people who studied the best of the best.

All of the things that have happened in my life have been self-propelled. I can't blame anybody else or point a finger at anybody.

I got accepted at Yale but never went.

Probably the sexiest woman I know is my mother.

My parents are retired, basically.

Child actors become types. The cutesy type, the funny type, the dark type. Any time you're a type, your career's over. It's not been effortless for me; I've had bumps in the road, you know? I was in Dumb And Dumberer. It's not been a flawless thing so far. But all in all, I'm proud of it. Most proud of it because of the diversity. Because the genres are different.

The big thing for actors is the level of commitment. So, if you know something's already happened, there's not a whole lot of whys and hows that go down. You just innately commit 'cause it happened. It does help with commitment.

I've never been able to learn from other people's mistakes - I'm not that smart - so I usually learn by trial by fire.

People were going to geometry class and I was swimming through vats of chili on 'Even Stevens.' It was like a dream!

I didn't read the book on how to be a well-adjusted celebrity.

I'm just selfish. I have to be for what I do.

And if you're a golfer and you watch a golf film and Matt Damon swing, and it's not great, then you're not going to believe in the golf story, you're not going to believe in the rest of the film. That's the whole movie, so if that swing looks like crap, the movie's crap.

My generation will actually be the first generation that is tamer than the one that came before it, and it will probably be poorer; less fun and less money. It's ridiculous. In my parents' generation, rebellion was pop culture. It's not anymore.

No, I come for a hippy lifestyle, it's very open; my parents are both hippies.

Oh yeah, I'm the president of the lucky club. There are so many talented people who don't work. And the crop of young actors I'm surrounded by is incredible. When you have people like that around you it amps you up a little bit. Also, Emile Hirsch and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, or guys like Ryan Gosling. It's a really good crowd and I feel I'm coming up at a good time. But equally, there's a lot of good young actors who don't get to work who are more talented than I. I'm just lucky.

Nobody makes movies like Oliver Stone.

I just wish the crowd I was associated with was more passionate about what they were doing and less consumed with the commerce of the art form.

And I'm not a personality; otherwise I'd be coming out with an album, performing on MTV. All that stuff is possible and I can do that tomorrow. I just have no need.

My family's lineage is five generations of artists who never made it.

I think every young actor in Los Angeles went up for that role. It was between Frankie Muniz and me, and he pulled out, so I got the role.

My life is okay, my life is pretty good.

I think envy motivates a lot of people.

I don't have to live this lavish lifestyle.

I think there's a form of honesty, because I used to be very honest with the press, and then it backfired on me, and I understood it.

We're living through the twilight of American economic dominance.

This is hands down the biggest, most exciting thing I've ever been involved with in my life. I can only compare it to my Bar Mitzvah.

To my mind, talent doesn't really exist. Talent is like a card player's luck. It is motivation, ambition, and luck. It's just a drive to be the best. I think acting is a con game.

I've been in fights, but that doesn't make me cool or like a tough guy or more interesting actor, I'm not proud of it.

Talent is to actors what luck is to card players. Its not really anything; its just a fictitious word that people have created and labeled things. Talent is like, you know, I never really believed in talent, I believed in drive and determination and preparation, but talent is sort of like luck.

To be an actor, a true actor, you have to be brokenhearted.

My mom is the backbone not just of my family but of many families.

People are still emulating the old fashioned criminal.

But this is a little different. This is the adult acting. This is a different crowd. It's more work and more good work. That's it. People will have their opinion regardless.

I'm an individual, and I have opinions.

I was planning on going to Yale to theater school.

You have to be a master to teach.