After devouring Don’t Worry Darling’s press tour, Shia LaBeouf heads to Megalopolis

It’s been a heck of a week for Shia LaBeouf. When isn’t it? The 36-year-old former child star, whose been wrestling with the pains of fame since he was 12, is always embroiled in some controversy or another, jumping between unparalleled success and personal ruin. Just this last week, he found himself at the center of yet another media whirlwind, refuting Olivia Wilde’s assertion that he was fired from her upcoming movie Don’t Worry Darling and seemingly admitting to the abuse allegations made by his former romantic partner musician FKA Twigs. Oh, he also now claims that the abuse depicted in his semi-autobiographical film, Honey Boy, was fictitious. Like we said, a heck of a week.

But as always, the canceled find a way back to the throne. Shia Labeouf has been cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, the acclaimed director’s $100 million passion project and one of the most anticipated titles in Hollywood.

It’s been two years since FKA Twigs filed a lawsuit against the actor, accusing him of sexual battery, sexual assault, and infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit has yet to go to trial, but, per Variety, Twigs said that LaBeouf “nearly choked her to death.” Appearing on Jon Bernthal’s Real Ones podcast, LaBeouf copped to some of this, though without going into detail, telling Bernthal, “I hurt that woman.”

“And in the process of doing that, I hurt many other people, and many other people before that woman,” he continued. “I was a pleasure-seeking, selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate, fearful human being.”

LaBeouf continues to maintain that he’s been working on himself, aiming to be a “billboard for a principled way of living.” Since 2019, when he starred as his own father in Honey Boy, which he wrote, and in the surprise box office hit Peanut Butter Falcon, LaBeouf has kept a lower profile due to the allegations made by FKA Twigs, which saw him effectively blacklisted from Hollywood for a whole two years. After starring in Able Ferrara’s Padre Pio, he converted to Catholicism and announced that he has been sober for nearly two years.

Putting his reformed attitude to the test, LaBeouf will star opposite Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Sire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, and James Remar. He’ll also be acting before one of show business’ more revered auteurs, who sold his vineyard to make a movie with Shia LaBeouf, apparently, a risky investment, to say the least.