Shia LaBeouf converts to Catholicism after studying for his role as a Saint in the upcoming film, Padre Pio.
Shia LaBeouf opens up about his newfound faith in a recent interview with Bishop Barron, founder of Word on Fire Catholic media company and host of YouTube series, Bishop Barron Presents.
During the 90-minute conversation, the actor alleges he was going through his darkest days at the start of filming Padre Pio, the upcoming movie directed by Abel Ferrara, in which LaBeouf plays St. Padre Pio himself.
“I had a gun on the table. I was outta here,” he explains. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore when all this happened. Shame like I had never experienced before — the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe. You don’t know where to go. You can’t go outside and get like, a taco.”
However, in the midst of all this turmoil, Shia describes having a “deep desire to hold on,” which his when he encountered his spiritual awakening, supposedly by complete surprise: “The reach-out had happened. I was already there, I had nowhere to go. This was the last stop on the train. There was nowhere else to go — in every sense.”
He added, “I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him. Drawing me away from worldly desires. It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in my car, drive up [to the monastery] if I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna save my career’.”
Padre Pio is an Italian-German biographical motion picture that is set for release on September 2022. See a short clip from the forthcoming film, featuring Shia LaBeouf, below.
