Interview with Constantine actor, Shia LeBeouf

SL: No. They are all there. In fact they added a lot of scenes at the end of the film. We had finished the film and they looked at the film and said this story’s not answered yet. There’s no period on this sentences. So we did re-shoots and added more scenes. That end scene at the end of the credits was never in this film until the end, until we had finished the film. When you kill off a character and you’re dealing with a film that deals with the after life you gotta show where they went. So I think that’s why that was added. It just felt unfinished.

Q: Did you enjoy working with Keanu?

SL: Does anybody come in here and say no? “No, absolutely not, Keanu is terrible to work with!” Keanu is a joy to work with and a pleasure and a real learning experience. I’ve never seen anybody prepare quite like Keanu in my life and I feel like I have extreme respect for him, and I didn’t at the outset. When we first started I was like, Oh, it’s just Keanu Reeves, he’s not a great actor, like a lot of people think, oh he’s just the ‘Whoa’ guy or the guy from Speed, but that completely changed and I wouldn’t lie to you. I really think he is turning into an excellent actor and I think the reason is look at why he’s making movies. He has the fame, so it can’t be that. He has more money than he knows what to do with, I don’t even think he’s bought a house yet. That’s not what it’s about for him. It’s not fame, it’s not money, it’s completely for respect. That’s it. Inside of Keanu and that’s the reason he’s so quiet and shy. He doesn’t feel like he has respect yet and he’s all about that. All he wants is respect and he’s going to get it eventually because that’s all he wants in life. And he gets it here. It’s his best performance thus far, I think, in his career. And every move he makes he’s getting even better and better and better. I respect that a lot and I think we’ve become friends through making this film and we’re friends on set and friends in the film. I learned a lot from him, just the way he prepares and the devotion. He’s so unjaded. He worked on this movie like it was his first movie. And that’s beautiful to see.

Q: We understand Keanu’s preparation for a role is really intense.

SL: Here’s an instance where we came into rehearsals, Akiva the writer is there, I’m there, Francis is there, Djimon’s there and Keanu’s there. We sit down at the table, this is like the first rehearsal of the entire film we’ve ever had. And we sit there and we still have like three months to go before we start or two months to go before we start filming and there’s a stack of black journals. Four or five journals and they’re thick, like ridiculously thick and I’m thinking it’s Akiva’s writings. Oh it’s the writers, of course it’s his stuff and Akiva sits down at a completely different chair and Keanu sits by the journals, opens them all up. They are all labeled, he opens them all up, one’s for lung cancer, one’s for Latin, you know spirituality, one’s for emotional arc for his character, like ridiculously prepared and I’d never seen anything like that and Jon Voight’s my mentor and he doesn’t prepare like that and he’s a legend, an Academy Award winner. Keanu just takes it so seriously, it’s his whole life. He doesn’t have hobbies. There’s nothing he does on the side. He wakes up in the morning, goes to work, takes his work home with him. If he has a bad day at work he has a bad day at home, that’s his life. That’s everything to Keanu is that and that’s beautiful to see really. It makes you feel like your job is important.

Q: How did you get interested in acting?

SL: I started off as a stand up comic when I was 11 or 12 in Los Angeles.

Q: Do they have kid stand up comics?

SL: No they don’t have kid stand up comics, that’s the thing. I was poor I’m from a neighborhood called Echo Park. I was really poor and I went to an all-black school I was the only white kid so my security blanket was humor, that’s what kept me out of trouble, kept me out of fights a lot of time. I would make fun of myself and I felt like the only thing that I could do to separate myself was to show up with a sick ass Jansport backpack or the new Filas and I didn’t have that money so what I did is I would go to this open house at the Ice House in Pasadena and I would go and they would pay me $20. I’d go for five minutes and I would do my jokes and then it turned into me getting a good routine and then I started doing it more and more and that’s how it blossomed into something I was doing, and then Even Stevens came and I got an Emmy and that transformed into Holes and all building blocks.

Q: How did Jon Voight become your mentor?

SL: Through [the movie] Holes. I think he saw something in me that he felt reminded him of himself and I’m extremely intrigued and I soak up stuff like a sponge and I’m always asking him questions, which can get annoying, but he is, it’s sort of like a psychologist thing for him, like a psychiatrist thing, he likes to talk and the reason for that is not a lot of people honestly want to listen. Like honestly want to listen and then he teaches me a lot of things and he says I teach him a lot of things, which is cool. It’s a relationship I really cherish. Few people get that. A mentor like Jon Voight, it’s out of control.

Q: What does that entail? Does he accompany you to sets?

SL: No, It’s like any friend, you call them when you want to talk to them. You don’t call them when you don’t want to talk to them, It’s not like Jon Voight’s on my back or I’m on his. It’s not like that. If I’m thinking about a role and I’m not sure I’ll call him, talk to him, or if there’s a script I really want and I don’t know how to go about it I’ll go over there and we’ll do scene study. It’s a cool little relationship man, he’s a cool guy.

Q: What’s your favorite Jon Voight movie?

SL: Coming Home or Midnight Cowboy.

Q: How much research did you do for this role?

SL: The thing is and Djimon says it a lot. You don’t really want to do too much research. Just because of the subject matter and how deep it is and how dark it is. You might have permanent effects to your life. Who’s to say this is a comic book film, why isn’t this a real film? Who knows? This could be a real, actual event and nobody knows it. It’s that real, to me, at least. And it’s a real question. Nobody knows if heaven or hell is real. So that’s what I think is different about this film definitely, is that it’s not some comic book, some guy in a spider spandex flying across from building to building this is can be real and it seems real and it’s shot real. As far as my preparation for the role, it wasn’t that elaborate because I’m so human in the film. The only thing I did do was I studied how to perform an exorcism with a priest and I learned a little bit of Latin and I read Satanic bibles and I learned a lot about religion and read up on what Wicca was and Voodoo. You learn about that kind of stuff, but you really don’t get too in depth.

Q: Do you have any particular religious beliefs?

SL: I’m up in the air, man. I come from a hippie household. I’m still on a search. Shia means gift from God, which is Hebrew, and my mom’s a Jew from New York. LeBeouf is Cajun-French. My dad is from Louisiana and it means beef. So the name means, thank god for beef.

Q: Are you a vegetarian?

SL: No, doesn’t that suck?

Q: Are you going to go to school?

SL: I got scouted by Yale. I’m not really interested in going to school. Everything I want to learn about is there for me. Plus, do I look like a kid that’s going to go to Yale? Honestly? No. The only reason why I would have gone to Yale is their drama classes teach technique. The type of technique John Tuturro has or Meryl Streep. It’s a technical form of acting whereas I’m more instinctual and it’s very realistic. But I need that technique, especially if there’s a role I want to play of a whatever, anything that’s not me. Physically or any other way. Tuturro can transform. Edward Norton can transform. And that’s because they know technique, but they also understand the balance between because there are some actors who are too technical and don’t seem realistic and I think the beauty the only reason I would have went to Yale would be to find the balance and study technique and be able to find a happy marriage, which is what those actors have.

Q: If you’re instinctual do you not like a lot of direction then?

SL: Look, you need direction because sometimes you might get lost and that’s the beauty of Francis. He has this guidelines. He knows where he wants this film to go, but still he promotes freedom and wants you to take on the role that you envisioned. It’s a lot of collaborating. A lot of creativity and that’s what’s great about Francis. Of course you have directors that you got to fight with sometimes, Look this is my job. Shut up. Let me do my thing. Not that blunt obviously you wouldn’t have a job, but sometimes you have to fight for your freedom and I didn’t have to fight at all with Francis for my freedom. He promoted it, but I love direction, I need somebody else’s input. That’s why it’s hard for me to watch myself on screen because the smallest thing will drive me crazy. The whole performance will be terrible if there’s one lip movement that seems false.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about your golf movie?

SL: The Greatest Game Ever Played is the true story of the creation of an American hero. The first American sports hero. You know in 1913 when the film takes place you never had a Lebron James or a Michael Jordan. You just didn’t have that. A sports hero back then was like a janitor. Rich people would show up at a golf course and say, oh you play? OK, so you’re a pro, huh? Here’s $15 you’re going to stay with me for six hours and teach me to play golf or basketball or baseball. There was no such as a Babe Ruth or Lebron James. Or $20 million. They were poor people. They were immigrants. Professional athletes and he was the first to change that and make. And back then, in 1913, the year before the Titanic, or after [Please note, the Titanic crashed in 1912] America was forming. People were coming to America. Full of immigrants. It was the America America and at that time we were still forming our beliefs and what we believed in and he was the first American to win the US Open, which was humongous. He was also the first amateur and one of the only amateurs still to this date to win a US Open because it’s a rich sport. He not only changed the sport and changed sports as we know it and became the first Babe Ruth of sports and became the first icon of sports but also changed the financial turning point.

Q: Did you have to learn to play golf for this?

SL: Yeah, nobody’s ever trained as much as I did ever in film. I’m telling you there’s no swing like this on film I don’t think ever. It’s not because I’m cocky, it’s just the truth. People like Tiger Woods have looked at the swing and said “That is a swing.”

Q: Are you a golf nut now?

SL: I enjoy the sport. I enjoy the fact that’s a very personal sport and you’re fighting yourself. I like the dichotomy of the sport and the arrangement of the rules. I’m not a golfer, I’m not. I have a good handicap. I mean I trained for six to seven months on my swing. That’s like six hours a day, everyday, playing golf so at a certain point.

Q: Who did you train with?

SL: Tons of people. There were six or seven trainers everyday of my life. I went on tour with the UCLA college team and I went to the US Open. It was very in depth study with that. Just because golf is one of those things where if you’re a golfer and you see a fake golf swing the whole movie’s done. The golfer will just go, that’s bull. That movie sucks now. We didn’t want to do that and our goal was to make one of the best sports films of all time. The best golf film definitely, which I think we did, but yeah, I’m not a golfer per say.

Q: When does the film open?

SL: October 1^st.

Q: You recently did some English voiceovers for a Japanese anime film that came out in 1984…

SL: Kaze no tani no Naushika. I didn’t even know about it until I saw the cast form. It was a solid cast. Uma Thurman and all these amazing actors. Patrick Stewart. Amazing actors. I said, Wow I want to be involved in this so I met with him and we hit it off and that was quite an experience to translate that. It’s a Japanese classic.

Q: Are you a fan of anime?

SL: Now I am. Definitely him. Him definitely. He’s a genius.

What’s your next project?

SL: Well, the Greatest Game comes out. I got lost in this animation for awhile so I’m doing another cartoon with Sony called Surf’s Up, which is just a lot of fun and it’s something I enjoy as far as surfing goes. We’ll see where that goes. Reading a lot of scripts, doing the actor thing.

Q: Is that what you do to relax, go surfing?

SL:Yeah sometimes.

Q: Where do you go?

SL: I got to Surfrider in Malibu or El Porto, Manhattan Beach area or there’s tons of spots. Right now because of the rain you can’t really surf Manhattan Beach because there’s this big shit pump there.

Q: What kind of board do you have?

SL: I was training on a Doyle for a long time I started loving it. I have an Al Merrick. It’s a really nice board, but my Doyle’s my favorite just because you don’t have to wax it and it’s really easy.

[end]

by Staci Layne Wilson