In case you missed the memo, "Transformers" star Shia LaBeouf is a seriously, serious actor now. Okay? He'll have sex on camera. Drink real moonshine. Hell, he'll even drop acid for a role. He is but a ball of theatrical clay just waiting for a director's touch.
On his quest to immerse himself ever further in his characters, the 26-year-old reportedly took acid to prepare for his role in "The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman," which recently debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.
Telling the story of a young man (LaBeouf) who travels to Romania following the death of his mother and falls in love with a dangerous woman (Evan Rachel Wood), the movie includes a sequence where LaBeouf's character consumes the hallucinogen, which is exactly why he had to try it himself.
"I'd never done acid before. I remember sending Evan tapes. I remember trying to conjure this and sending tapes. And Evan being like 'That's good, but that's not but, that is,'" LaBeouf told MTV. "You reach out to friends and gauge where you're at. I was sending tapes around and I'd get 50 percents from people and that just starts creeping me out. I was getting really nervous toward the end. Not cause I wanted to be on drugs -- I'm not trying to mess with the set or anything like that. It's really just fear that propels people."
LaBeouf first discussed taking the drug to get in his character's mindset with USA Today last fall.
"There's a way to do an acid trip like 'Harold & Kumar,' and there's a way to be on acid," LaBeouf said. "What I know of acting, Sean Penn actually strapped up to that (electric) chair in 'Dead Man Walking.' These are the guys that I look up to," said LaBeouf to USA Today.
LaBeouf also hit the bottle with a vengeance to play a hard-drinking bootlegger in the Prohibition-era crime drama "Lawless." Even though he gave up alcohol years ago after he was involved in a bar fight and a car wreck, LaBeouf admitted he drank real moonshine to prepare for the part.
"My drinking on this movie was as undestructive as I could possibly make it, if that makes sense," he told the New York Post. "I did it for the movie. I didn't drink off set for no reason. I did it because, when I showed up on set the next day, my eyes looked like this and my face ... had that drunk bloat that I needed, that I couldn't have if that wasn't going on."
"Moonshine is different than liquor. Moonshine is closer to heroin," he added. We can only hope he's not hinting at his next method work.
LaBeouf's next movie doesn't revolve around drugs or alcohol, but addiction is still at it's core. There's not much information on the film, but it's called "The Nymphomaniac," so, you do the math. Based on his penchant for choosing challenging material, the 2013 Lars von Trier film sounds perfect for LaBeouf: it reportedly requires the actors be willing to engage in real sex on film. Spoiler: LaBeouf will courageously sacrifice himself for his art once again.
"It is what you think it is. There's a disclaimer at the top of the script that basically says, we're doing [the sex] for real. And anything that is 'illegal' will be shot in blurred images. But other than that, everything is happening," LaBeouf said.
Directed by Danish provocateur Von Trier, "Nymphomaniac" is scheduled to hit theaters in 2013.