Shia
LaBeouf
and
Megan Fox:
Transformer’s Sweethearts
by Lynn B
 Young
man of the hour Shia LaBeouf and his beautiful, raven-haired Transformers
co-star Megan Fox both turned 21 this year. She celebrated at a Maxim
magazine party and Shia went to a cigar lounge in Beverly Hills. As for
relationships; Megan is engaged to former “90210” star Brian
Austin Green and Shia says, “I’m just dating and messing around.
I’m 21 years old [so I’m] doing the 21-year-old thing”.
We got the
up close and personal scoop on these two in Beverly Hills recently when
we interviewed the duo about their experiences on their new summer blockbuster
film. At L.A.’s Four Seasons Hotel, Shia was relaxed in brown shirt
over a tee and jeans. Megan accessorized her dark outfit with a gold cuff
encrusted with diamonds.
In a casual
chat, we learned everything from Shia’s feelings about his big role
in the long-awaited new Indiana Jones film and the fact that he had tons
of fun driving a hot car on the Transformers set to his non-participation
in partying young Hollywood. Megan told us about an on-set injury and
what it’s like pretending something huge and metal is standing in
front of you when it’s really just a tall stick. We even found out
which movies the two remember as summer date flicks when they were younger.
We sit down and can’t help but notice that this hot girl has a tattoo
of Marilyn Monroe! Wazzup with that?
AGW: Is that
a Marilyn tattoo? Someone is a good artist.
Megan: Yeah,
Mark Mahoney at Shamrock.
AGW: Why Marilyn?
Megan: She
was one of the first people I ever saw on television when I was literally
a baby and my mom said, from that time, whenever I would hear her voice,
I would cry so I just had immense empathy for her. [NOTE: She also has
a star-shaped tattoo on her ankle]
AGW: How many
tattoos do you have total?
Megan: Ummm,
eight.
AGW: Really?
How about you, Shia?
Shia: Three.
[He’s not showing us any of them].
AGW: Transformers
might be the big teen fave movie of the summer. When you were a teenager,
what was the big movie that just blew you away?
Shia: Titanic,
for me was big. That was the one. It had to be.
Megan: We
weren’t teenagers though really. Maybe ten.
Shia: But,
like my tween life, when I was twelve Titanic was like a party,
man. I went like four or five times and Scream was a big deal.
Megan: Scream
was a big one. But Titanic wasn’t really big with us.
Shia: Really?
[he’s really surprised]
AGW: What
do each of you remember as your first big date movie that you took someone
to?
Megan: I wasn’t
allowed to date like my whole life until I moved out but I snuck out once
and went to see Lord of the Rings with a boyfriend. God, I was
already like sixteen sneaking out.
Shia: Mine
was weird. It wasn’t like a romantic choice. It was Amistad.
That was kind of strange. Kinda weird. She was into boats. I thought it
was a good choice [we laugh]. That’s probably my big date movie.
AGW: Megan,
how did you get involved in doing Transformers? I think all of
young, female Hollywood wanted your part.
Megan: I never
saw the other people that they were casting but I went in at the very
bottom and went to like eight auditions and did readings with Mike [director
Michael Bay] and Shia and then, finally, I got the word.
AGW: Were
you pretty jazzed when you got the word?
Megan: I was.
I was pretty excited. I remember, when they first called me to audition
for it, I didn’t understand. I wasn’t a huge Transformers
fan. I got them confused with like the other robots that had people
in them [“Power Rangers”].
Shia: [confused]
Like Go-bots?
Megan: I was
like ‘am I going to have to be one?’ It was all a big blur.
AGW: So, Shia,
your first reaction on seeing the finished film?
Shia LaBeouf:
Yeah, [wicked]. It’s a pretty [wicked] movie. I think, I’ve
just never seen action like this ever so just from the action standpoint
it’s pretty nuts. The actors are all really fun to watch. It was
a good group. The crowd was really mixed as far as the actors go. You
go from [John] Turturro to Anthony Anderson and it’s like the whole
spectrum with different types of styles. And the storyline is fun. It’s
like we’re creating mythology. It’s a dangerous [sucker].
AGW: Guys
would say that you’re a lucky man because you worked with a beautiful
woman in Disturbia [Sarah Roemer] and now Megan.
Shia: Yeah.
it’s a real pleasure to show up.
Megan: We
spent an entire day shooting a kissing scene which didn’t even make
it into the movie which makes me think he set that [stuff] up. [Shia grins
and wiggles eyebrows].
AGW: In all
the action sequences, Shia, how much of that was you? How much was stuntmen;
like hanging off of that building?
Shia: Probably
90 percent is me. Well that building stuff is all me.
AGW: You certainly
did a lot of running in the movie.
Shia: Oh,
running, yeah. When you film it from the side it looks way faster.
AGW: What
was the hardest things you had to do in this film? Stunts?...
Megan: Golly,
every day was pretty….
Shia: Her
feet were bleeding.
Megan: They
weren’t bleeding. He just made that up. I lost my two big toenails
[I make an ewwwww sound]. Not from a specific accident. It was just from
the constant running in the wardrobe boots. It just rubbed my toenails
off. They grow back.
Shia: The
hairiest for me was that roof thing. That was wild. They just put me up
there and tied me to the statue.
AGW: How high
up were you?
Shia: Uh,
it’s high. I don’t know exactly. Maybe sixty stories but I
was just up there one day.
Megan: The
only thing that’s in the movie that wasn’t there when we were
filming are the actual Autobots and Decepticons.
Shia: Most
of the explosions were there.
 AGW:
Was there a point where you thought, ‘I’m going to lose my
life’?
Shia: Every
day. You look at Bay and Bay’s all frantic ‘Put him on the
thing. Put him on the thing!’ That’s scary because you’re
moving so fast. You don’t want him to mess up and forget that you’re
on ‘the thing’.
AGW: What
was your relationship like with Michael Bay on the movie. He’s often
described as ‘The General’. Was he collaborative with you
or did he just give orders and you just did your job?
Megan: He
was collaborative. Especially, he have you a lot of freedom with dialogue.
He’s good that way.
Shia: Yeah.
I enjoyed him.
AGW: What
changes did you make from the script?
Shia: Most
of it was just like, ‘Just go. We’ve got to spice this up,
make it funnier. Let’s do this and this’. It collaborative.
It’s like a big collage. Everybody jumps in with their ideas and
throws stuff in. I wasn’t the only one. [Jon] Voight and Turturro
and Megan, everybody. It was constantly changing things.
AGW: What
was some of the dialogue that you added?
Shia: Oh,
the banter? Probably stuff with the parents. All the stuff with the parents.
All that stuff was pretty funny.
AGW: Megan,
when you read the script were you happy that your character got to kick
some [backside] and wasn’t just the damsel in distress?
Megan: Yeah,
I was. Both of the female characters in the movie were very strong characters.
Rachel’s [Taylor’s] character is very intelligent. I thought
that they were representing women very well.
AGW: At one
point, you guys are making out on the hood of the car. Don’t you
think that’s kind of weird that you’ve got these robots hanging
around kinda watching?
Megan: You
know what, somebody pointed out that we’re laying on Bumblebee [the
Transformer that turns into Shia’s car in the film]. Kinda weird.
AGW: Shia,
you’ve talked before about how you stay out of the whole Hollywood
scene but now that you’re becoming more and more popular, do you
find that you’re more tempted to do clubs and party?
Shia: Well,
there’s different shades of Hollywood, sure. I mean, I’m working
in this business but I’m not Hollywood. Hollywood is a whole different
thing. The party thing, that’s just not interesting to me. That
just seems like kind of square. Nobody really has fun at those clubs anyway.
If I want to party, I’ll party at my house. You know, I probably
could get away with more and probably meet nicer people.
AGW: How about
you Megan?
Megan: Yeah,
I avoid that completely. It just doesn’t appeal to me at all. I
see what it does to people. I don’t like going to clubs like that
because I’m not looking to hook up with somebody so why am I going
to go and dance around tables if that’s not what I’m looking
for—that kind of attention?
AGW: Good
point. Both of you were too young when the toys originally came out [in
the 1980’s] but what were your toys as a kid?
Shia: Yogi
Bear. That was it.
Megan: I played
with Ninja Turtles.
AGW: Can one
of you talk about acting without the robots there? What was actually there
on set for you?
Megan: All
of the robots were represented by window washer poles, metal poles and
they were all height appropriate to each character so we were looking
in the right direction. Sometimes they would attach… ILM has these
red, glowing balls and they attach them to the top and that’s the
face and the rest we just sort of create [in our heads] and we have to
create it together because we have to move at the same time if we’re
being approached at the same time by the same thing so it was difficult.
Shia: Yeah,
but you choreograph it like a dance. You just start learning movements.
‘On whose line is this happening?’ Or ‘where’s
it coming from?’. Then you just start memorizing their [the robots’]
movements. It becomes fun.
Megan: Yeah,
and they show us animatics. That really helped with all the moving stuff.
AGW: Does
Michael Bay talk all through a scene like ‘he’s doing this.
He’s doing that’?
Shia: Yeah.
His whole demeanor changes too. He starts doing this soft, narrator voice.
First, he goes like [yelling] ‘Quiet on the [set]. Quiet on the
[set]!’ Then, [whispering] ‘He’s moving. There’s
no legs. There’s no legs on him’. [we laugh]
AGW: Shia,
what have the last couple of months been like for you with Disturbia
being a big hit, then Surf’s Up and it was confirmed you
are in Indiana Jones?
Shia: It’s
crazy. It’s nuts. You never expect it to explode like that. The
Indy news alone would have been my year, my life! So, it’s just
been wild. Nobody expected Disturbia. It wasn’t like people
were eyeing that like that was going to be a big hit or anything.
AGW: This
movie is a lot funnier than I anticipated. How did you balance that with
action that you are supposed to take seriously?
Shia: Yeah.
It’s in keeping with the tone of the cartoon. You can’t make
a Transformer movie without the humor. The cartoon had humor. It was this
‘80’s cheesy cartoon that’s now become something else.
AGW: Which
Transformer is your favorite?
Megan: In
this movie it’s Bumblebee which, I’m sure, is everyone’s
answer because he is the hero of the movie but, in the cartoon, it was
Starscream.
 Shia:
Bumblebee in both, Bumblebee.
AGW: You end
up driving a really hot car… well a Transformer but sometimes it’s
a car. Did they give you a free car?
Shia: No,
no, no. A little remote control one. I got a couple of those.
AGW: You had
the concept car for the new Camaro to use on set, right?
Shia: Right.
Before they had even made them. We had a dude on set with us from GM who
was all over us.
Megan: He
wouldn’t let us sneeze. We couldn’t do anything inside the
car. We were trying to act in the scene and we couldn’t even move
and touch the leather.
Shia: Meanwhile,
when we get away from him, we’re pushing the car at 140 on a freeway
at night and the second we get back to set, Mike’s like washing
down the leather. We just rode it through gravel! It was weird.
AGW: Speaking
of cars, if you two were cruising in your cars, what would you be listening
to?
Shia: She’s
gonna say Nirvana cuz she’s so dark [laughter].
Megan: Yeah,
they’re my favorite band.
Shia: Tyrese
all day long.
AGW: Did he
give his albums to his fellow cast members?
Megan: Yeah.
Shia: Oh yeah.
Are you kidding me? He read [the lyrics] to me phonetically, like a baby
book.
AGW: If the
movie has a sequel, are there a lot of Transformers you would like to
see in it?
Shia: Oh yeah.
Well, I have things that I don’t want to happen. Like I don’t
want to go into Beast Wars world, you know? That would be strange. There’s
a little bit of it in Scorpinox but it’s not nuts. If it went nuts
and it was like gorilla/giraffe fights, that would be lame. Thundercats
would be sick. But you can’t do it now. We’ve taken over.
AGW: Megan,
what’s next for you?
Shia: I’m
doing a movie with Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst called How to Lose
Friends and Alienate People. It’s shooting. I’m leaving
tomorrow night after this.
AGW: Shia,
did you meet Spielberg at all during making this film?
Shia: He came
to set and said ‘hey, Shia, how’s life?’ ‘Good’.
‘Movie looks great’. He’s just a very pleasant guy.
He always really pleasant and trying to make you feel comfortable all
the time. He’s super aware that he’s Steven Spielberg and
what that does to a person. He’s always trying to knock that down,
all the time.
AGW: Let’s
finish this off with Indiana Jones questions. Did you get the Indy role
based on Transformers?
Shia: They
used Transformers and Disturbia and Steven just watched
all the dailies for like 9 months. It was just a 9 month audition I imagine.
AGW: What
was your first meeting with Harrison Ford like?
Shia: He’s
the man. He’s the man! Harrison is ready to go. He’s jacked,
he’s ready to go. He’s in shape. I’ve never seen a man
that age in that type of shape.
AGW: Well,
you’ve been around Spielberg Shia, but how is it going to feel taking
direction from him and actually being on the Indy set?
Shia: It’s
a lot of pressure because there’s a part of you that’s like
‘this is great, I should trust him completely…Steven Spielberg
you know. He knows what he’s doing. Relax’. But then there’s
the other part of you that goes ‘ok, now you gotta earn this. There’s
got to be a reason’. I still don’t feel it makes any sense
for me to be in the movie.
AGW: Do you
feel you have to up your game?
Shia: Oh yeah.
I can just see the first day with Steven behind the camera and Lucas behind
the monitor and Harrison over there and Cate [Blanchett] over there and
like ‘action!’ It’s scary to me. It’s scary.
AGW: Are you
going to sneak in and put on the hat and the leather jacket?
Shia: [grin]
Oh, that’s already happened, oh yeah!
pictures copyright
DreamWorks/Paramount Pictures, 2007
|
