Shia LaBeouf Talks Drug Use For New Film

by UInterviewAugust 28, 2012, 12:00 amNews >

The latest development in Shia LaBeouf's attempt to establish himself as a member of the Hollywood counterculture involves LaBeouf's admission to dropping acid for "research" on his role in the upcoming mob story, The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, also starring Evan Rachel Wood, Melissa Leo, Mads Mikkelsen and Rupert Grint and slated for release at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

One scene in The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman reportedly portrays LaBeouf's charcter tripping on the hallucinogenic drug. "There's a way to do an acid trip like Harold & Kumar, and there's a way to be on acid," LaBeouf said about feeling like he had to really experience an acid trip to portray one effectively, reports USA Today. "What I know of acting, Sean Penn actually strapped up to that [electric] chair in Dead Man Walking. These are the guys I look up to."

This news comes after LaBeouf waxed philosophical about his full frontal nudity for the Sigur Ros music video "Fjogur Piano" and also revealed that his sex scenes in the upcoming Lars Von Trier's The Nymphomaniac are real. Add that to a history of implying intimate relations with costar Megan Fox and insulting his own films, and you sure do have one independent Hollywood thinker.

Lawless director John Hillcoat has a word for LaBeouf's acting style — not quite Method, but "Method-like," he calls it. Lawless, starring LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Dane DeHann and Gary Oldman, hits theaters on August 29. The Nymphomaniac and The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman are slated for release sometime in 2013.