Shia LaBeouf has long been one of my favorite actors, matched only by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who I briefly met once while living in LA, something of which I do not speak1).
I’ve admired him for a long time. It probably started when I was a middle school reading teacher and taught the wonderful book Holes (he stars in the movie adaptation, which is equally wonderful), but as the years went on I continued to appreciate his acting ability as well as his candor and authenticity in interviews. I try to watch every film2 and interview he does. I’m a fan!
Shia officially became Catholic a few weeks ago, on New Year’s Eve. I have some thoughts on him and his journey I’ve been wanting to share for a while now.
First, a bit of background.
Shia has sort of fallen out of favor in Hollywood in recent years amid incidents of erratic behavior and allegations of abuse. I don’t follow any celebrity too closely, but I was sad to hear about his personal struggles with mental health and addiction. I enjoyed watching Honeyboy when it came out 2019, a very personal screenplay he wrote himself while in rehab.
He was in the cultural spotlight for a bit back in the fall of 2022. He had a powerful spiritual experience while working on the movie Padre Pio, in which he played the role of the beloved Italian saint, and was feeling drawn to Catholicism. He did two interviews during that time that were making their way around social media, one with Bishop Barron, an acclaimed Catholic theologian, and the other with some YouTube show (unfamiliar to me) with a pretty big audience.
I’m a recent Catholic convert myself, so that plus my ongoing admiration of him caused me to go down a multiple-day rabbit hole of listening to these interviews. (They’re long—1.5 and 2 hours—and together have had over 10 million views. The two conversations are very different, but both are centered around his personal and spiritual growth, and both are very moving.)
After I listened, I posted the interviews to my Instagram and shared my excitement about them. DMs filled my inbox.
Shia LaBeouf? Isn’t he kind of crazy? Do you know he’s accused of abusing his girlfriend? etc. etc.
I sent some version of the same reply many times:
Yeah, I know he's had some trouble. I’m sure he’s done some bad things. Have you listened to the interviews?
I also engaged in a DM conversation with a friend and remember her stating a concern that Shia had said he was attracted to a “more masculine” image of Jesus.
Soon I started to see the opinion pieces float around the Internet, a few simply questioning the authenticity of his conversion and some more hostile, like one with a headline describing the Barron interview as “a portrait of masculine aggression.”
It seemed an agreed-upon narrative was forming, and it went something like this: It doesn’t matter what big revelation he says he’s had. He’s an abuser. He’s just another example of a bad man.
Reacting to the cultural response
I read and appreciated
’s thoughts, where she gave a nuanced take:I supposed you’d think a feminist newsletter would loathe any pro-masculinity sentiment coming from the mouth of an alleged abuser, and yet, abuse is so completely un-masculine that I can only rejoice at the thought of a man finding true masculinity in the faith.
However, this was the only thing I read (of many things) that didn’t basically scoff at Shia’s interviews. Which made—makes—me very sad.
The question that keeps echoing in my brain is What do we want from men?!
Mainstream feminism is constantly, in one way or another, telling men to DO BETTER. Here’s a man having open, brutally honest long-form conversations about the healing journey he’s been on, and all we have to say is MEEEH. Sounds like toxic masculinity.
Like, what?
Here’s how I see it
I’m going to get really honest here. I still consider myself a feminist (I think), but I’m pretty worn of a rhetoric and a culture that doesn’t seem to care about uplifting or inspiring men. True masculinity is beautiful and important, yet most mentions of the word “masculinity” are negative. I have brothers and a father and a husband and male friends.
I feel like I see this clearly, and it breaks my heart.
If we so badly want men to be better, are we also interested in supporting them? It doesn’t feel like it. Instead, when someone’s work helps men, we seem to hate them all the more for it.3 When we see a young man freely admit his wrongdoings and lay his journey out to the entire world, we’re skeptical and critical.
As I watched the interviews, my heart swelled with the hope and beauty I saw. As I observed our culture’s response, I felt frustrated.
Let’s break it down…
It’s the easy path to write off the story of Shia’s spiritual journey as a woman-abuser continuing down a path of toxic masculinity (now he’s getting interviews because he says he’s changed!). It’s harder to entertain the notion of a man who messed up, is owning it, and has found his way. That’s not the sexy story.
It also doesn’t fit the cultural zeitgeist. We swim in the water of feminism, always and forever obsessed with empowering women. We don’t seem all that interested as a culture in encouraging men.
As a culture we swim in the water of feminism, obsessed with the empowering of women. We don’t seem all that interested in encouraging men.
In the political/social spaces, there’s continual talk of “toxic masculinity” and “accountability.” The #metoo movement reigns supreme, where we’re supposed to always #believewomen (as if relationships aren’t complicated and women don’t also abuse men; furthermore we don’t believe women if they’re mothers and bring up a topic we don’t want to hear about4). We talk incessantly about the male identities of the perpetrators in the tragic mass shootings of the last several decades.
As a culture, we seem intently focused on men’s failures and the terrible things they do. Let’s assume that this talk is legitimate. (Of course, to some extent it absolutely is5.) How, then, are we showing an actual commitment to the reality of what we say we want? How are we supporting men to do better?
How are we supporting men to do better?
In my view, not a lot.
For one, we don’t seem to want men to have any role models. Men in movies and sitcoms—especially when they’re husbands and fathers—are routinely written as clueless and incompetent (my husband likes to point this out). Stories with men at the center, especially men as heroes, are becoming less and less common, while female protagonists and heroines are becoming the norm. Think of the new(ish) Lord of the Rings series, which debuted on Amazon in September of 2022. In stark contrast to the *actual* LOTR, which contains many brave and admirable male characters, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power casts females as the heroes of the story; men, not so much. (I haven’t seen it, but apparently the male characters leave a lot to be desired.)
The film was Amazon’s highest-grossing premiere ever.
Aside from the lack of support for men in the form of role models and cultural encouragement, there’s also a sense of outright hostility toward anyone who expresses an interest in the well-being of men. Any talk of really anything pro-man is met with horror and blacklisting.
A few examples. In 2017, feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye set out to make a film about the men’s rights’ movement and ended up making an entirely different film (one that shows the beauty and the necessity of supporting men). She experienced backlash and funding issues as a result, and the film sits at a sad 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. Renowned lecturer Jordan Peterson has received criticism about his work influencing or being directed toward young men. In addition to clarifying that there are plenty of women who resonate with his messages, he’s replied, “Even if I were trying only to help young men, what would be wrong with that?”
If we want men to stop doing awful things, are we interested in helping them deal with their issues? Their pain? In inspiring them? It doesn't seem like it.
Which brings us back to Shia LaBeouf.
Shia has taken full responsibility for his wrongdoings. He’s a husband and a father now. He’s doing the work, and he poured his heart and his story out to the entire world. And the response of so many has been at best, skepticism—I don’t know, has he really found God?—and at worst, criticism.6
A redemption story is a beautiful thing, and I feel it’s especially so when it’s the story of a man. Men often don’t take spiritual journeys. It’s difficult, emotional work for any of us to mine our past and integrate the pain we’ve experienced and the mistakes we’ve made, but men in particular are socialized against vulnerability of any kind. We should be celebrating Shia, that he’s both taken the journey and shared so openly about it.
Men’s healing is our healing as well.
As a woman, I want men to heal. I assume most women do. Many of us are married to men, all of us have dads, many of us have other close male relationships in our lives. Men’s healing is our healing as well.
So I say, Welcome Home, Shia. (A phrase commonly said to Catholic converts upon their official conversion.) I hope you continue to experience God’s grace in the form of personal growth and restoration, for your sake and the sake of your family. It’s been breathtakingly beautiful to watch so far.
Listen to Shia’s interview with Bishop Barron.
Listen to Shia’s interview with Jon Bernthal.
A personal note: I’m aware this is kind of an intense topic, and I welcome your perspective. I don’t claim to know it all and am just saying what I see from my vantage point. Thank you for reading and I invite you to leave a comment or reply to this via email with your thoughts.
I was with my friend Kelly who is an LA Native and has no issue talking to famous people. I, however, was embarrassingly star struck and I still cringe thinking about how I could barely speak. It was a whole thing.
Read an article I wrote about Pieces of a Woman, a 2020 film he was in. I had some things to say you might be interested in if you read this publication.
You may or may not know that I’m talking here about Jordan Peterson, whose deeply thoughtful work has helped many young men to get their acts together but who has been villainized in the mainstream media for this and for other reasons.
Look up the hashtag #believemothers.
I just listened to a podcast where J.K. Rowling described the awful domestic violence in her marriage. I understand this is and has been a very real and very terrible reality for women.
I feel there’s also a total lack of the forgiveness in our culture, a whole other topic.