Shia LaBeouf didn't speak to his mentor Jon Voight "for years" after a huge bust-up
The pair worked together on 2003 comedy Holes and on 2007' blockbuster Transformers and Shia credits the Midnight Cowboy star with teaching him the "craft" of acting, but they fell out over the phone and their relationship imploded after LaBeouf threatened to come over to his pal's house for a "fist fight"
18 September 2025
They later made up before filming Francis Ford Coppola's movie Megalopolis together, with LaBeouf admitting he had to "make amends" with Voight.
Speaking in new documentary Megadoc - about the making of the Megalopolis - LaBeouf explained: "The first version [of the script] I read was about five years ago.
"[Coppola] did a table read. And in the time from that read to this film, I had basically f***** my whole life up. I was in the midst of doing my ninth step in this program I'm in, and I had to go make amends to Voight because Voight's politics and mine are very different. I love him very much ...
"He was like my mentor from a young age. He was like the first real actor I ever met, and he's the first one who put me on to [Dustin] Hoffman's repertoire ...
"He would sit in a room with me and watch all these movies back to back, and [that] made me fall in love with the process and the craft, because before that, I was just a poor kid making money."
LaBeouf added of their falling out: "We had a big fight on the phone where I told him I was going to come to his house and we were going to fist fight, and I hung up the phone. Didn't talk to him for years."
The documentary charts the making of Coppola's 2024 sci-fi epic Megalopolis, and in the film LaBeouf reveals he feared he was going to get fired from the film before shooting began after a public meltdown and a brush with the law.
Coppola still wanted LaBeouf in the movie, but the pair ended up clashing on set and the actor revealed the director called him "the biggest pain in his f****** a***" but later emailed to apologise for losing his temper.
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