The 'Padre Pio' actor also opens up about the death of his mother in a new interview promoting his new film.
Shia LaBeouf is ready to end his he said, she said battle with Olivia Wilde.
The stars have been publicly at odds over the narrative surrounding LaBeouf's exit from the Wilde-directed Don't Worry Darling. LaBeouf was originally cast opposite Florence Pugh in a role that eventually went to Harry Styles and, while conducting interviews to promote the project, Wilde has said that LaBeouf was fired. He released a series of text message screenshots and a video message from Wilde while claiming that he, in fact, quit the film.
Asked to respond to Wilde's latest remarks in Vanity Fair, in which she called the situation "nuanced" and wished him well "in his recovery," LaBeouf offered a concise and lighthearted take.
"It is what it is," he said in an email exchange with The Hollywood Reporter. "Every blessing to her and her film."
The 36-year-old actor is currently promoting his own historical drama film -- Padre Pio, directed by Abel Ferrara -- in which he plays the titular lead. In the role, LaBeouf plays a scandal-plagued Franciscan Capuchin monk at the dawn of fascism in Italy who becomes a household name after allegedly experiencing stigmata.
At the time that the part was presented to him, LaBeouf says he was searching for "an undefined higher power." He has since converted to Catholicism and says he received support from Mel Gibson along his religious journey.
He also reflects on the recent loss of his mother, acknowledging that being by her side at her death bed last month provided him with "the ultimate persuasion for faith." His mother, Shayna Saide, died of heart failure on Aug. 27. She was 80.
"My mother was full of fear in her last moments: asking the doctor what this tube was and what that machine did. She was frantic. She was deeply interested in God and spirituality her whole life, but she didn’t know him," he says. "Hence her last moments. Her greatest gift to me was to promote, in her dying, the necessity of a relationship with God. Not an interest, not just a belief, but a relationship built on proof as tangible as a hug. Her last gift to me was the ultimate persuasion for faith. She was a good girl. She was loved by many and known by too few. God bless you, Momma."
In terms of his new place as a father -- he shares a 5-month-old daughter with Mia Goth -- LaBeouf says that parenthood has taught him "that love is more important than art."
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