Who are Shia LaBeouf's parents? All about his family as actor says he wronged dad with ‘Honey Boy’ portrayal

After claiming that the 2019 movie Honey Boy was mostly inspired by his own life, actor Shia LaBeouf is speaking out against the way his relationship with his father was portrayed in the film, which he himself wrote and created.

During an interview on the Real Ones podcast with his Fury co-star Jon Bernthal, LaBeouf admitted to having "wronged" his father by depicting him as a cruel and violent parent in the movie.

Calling the depiction of his father in the movie "f*ucking nonsense," LaBeouf noted:

"Honey Boy is basically a big 'woe is me' story about how fucked my father is, and I wronged him."

Shia LaBeouf's father, Jeffrey Craig LaBeouf, is a former commedia dell'arte clown, while his mother, Shayna Saide LaBeouf, is a visual artist and a jewelry designer.

During a 2018 interview with Esquire, Shia also revealed that Jeffrey LaBeouf served three tours in Vietnam and happened to struggle with heroin addiction.

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Here's everything we know about Shia LaBeouf's parents

Shia LaBeouf's parents, Jeffrey and Shayna, were into performance art, leading Shia to become an actor. In a 2009 interview with Parade, Shia explained how "grateful" he was for his parents' professions. He noted:

"My dad and my mom were both artists who never found an audience for their artwork. And so I lived in poverty. Now that I'm not poor, I know that is what it was. I look back at that stuff and I'm grateful. It's like scars. You become proud of them."

In the same interview, Shia LaBeouf also noted the reason for his parents' divorce when he was three years old. He said:

"Finance drove my family apart because they were co-owners in a fashion company that fell apart. And my mother blamed my dad for it, you know, blamed him for wrecking it all. My mom and my dad, and vice-versa — it’s back and forth. It may not be the sole reason for the split, but it is the superficial reason. It’s the surface reason that you can point at and go, ‘That’s the reason.'"

When Shia LaBeouf was nine years old, his father Jeffrey was admitted to rehab while Shia lived in a motel with his mother. However, by age 10, Shia would perform standup comedy shows as he decided to pick up acting while on a trip to Malibu with his father.

As per Buzzfeed News, LaBeouf's dad, Jeffrey, is an alleged s*x offender who has reportedly also claimed that he was drunk during the attempted r*pe that he was convicted for.

During an interview with Aaron Gell in 2019, Jeffrey LaBeouf claimed that the script he was sent before Honey Boy was filmed was nothing like the final movie. However, he also noted that he was on good terms with his son, Shia LaBeouf. The comedian said:

"Before they filmed it, we went through the script and talked about it. Somewhere I have the original, which is nothing like the project now. And I’m not trying to take any credit. I want Hollywood to look at him as a writer, because he is. He’s an amazing artist."

In an interview with Jon Bernthal on the Real Ones podcast, Shia LaBeouf also noted how his father was not like the man portrayed in the movie. He said:

“I turned the knob up on certain sh*t that wasn't real... My dad never hit me, never. He spanked me once, one time. And the story that gets painted in Honey Boy is, this dude is abusing his kid all the time.”

Furthermore, Shia LaBeouf admitted that his father was "vilified on a grand scale." He added:

"My dad was so loving to me my whole life. Fractured, sure. Crooked, sure. Wonky, for sure. But never was not loving, never was not there. He was always there... and I'd done a world press tour about how f*cked he was as a man.”

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Shia LaBeouf made headlines as he has been accused of being abusive towards his ex-partner FKA Twigs, whom he met on the set of Honey Boy. Twigs filed a lawsuit in 2020 accusing Shia of domestic violence. The trial is set for April 2023.