Shia LaBeouf is the fastest (and most talented) rising star in Hollywood today. In a recent interview, LaBeouf talks about his friendship with Hollywood big-wig Steven Spielberg, his childhood, painting toilet seats, and the hottest date with a girl!


In the lastest issue of GQ Magazine, Shia spilled the beans on "all things Shia!" Like, where should you take a girl for a hot date? The gun range of course! Plus, what videogame is Spielberg addicted to? BIOSHOCK!

Here are some excerpts,

On guns, girls and Spielberg, "Sport shooting hadn’t been my idea, nor was it some studio scheme to show the tough side of the boy in the blockbuster. LaBeouf insisted on it: He’s taken up the pursuit recently, and as we wait for a ride from the parking lot up to the range, he explains the appeal. “Believe it or not, it’s a good date,” he says. “I bring girls up here sometimes; it’s kind of—it’s very invigorating for them.”

LaBeouf owns just one gun, but he practically lusts over the collection owned by his Hollywood—and sport-shooting—mentor, Steven Spielberg. “He has the most ridiculous collection,” LaBeouf says. “He’s got a gun for every movie he’s made. He buys old Perazzi guns, Italian—beautiful, beautiful guns—and gets them engraved. It takes like a year. He’s got the Jaws gun; he’s got E.T. He let me shoot with the Jurassic Park gun. He just got his Saving Private Ryan back from the engraver’s.”

On BIOSHOCK with Spielberg, "One time Steven told me to come to his house ready to go skeet shooting,” says LaBeouf. “I get there and stick my head in to ask if he’s ready—and this is classic Spielberg—he says, ‘Nope, Shia. I’m trapped!’ ” LaBeouf then starts playing both parts—concerned protégé and faraway mentor:

“You’re trapped? Steven, what are you talking about?”

“I’m trapped back here. Follow my voice.”

“Where are you?”

“Over here… Here… Here!”

LaBeouf kept following the calls until he got to the director’s office. And there was the master himself: shoes off, socks on, dressed in shooting gear, but sitting behind a computer, stuck on the fifteenth level of a first-person shooter called BioShock.

“This is like months to get to this level, and he can’t get past this one little mysterious spider god, and he’s losing his mind. He’s like, ‘I can’t do it, Shia! I can’t do it.’ ”

LaBeouf, who got into acting at age 12 partly because he wanted to make enough money to buy himself a Sega Genesis, had found himself a soul mate. "

On toilet-seat art, "Me and my friends, as an art project, we decided, you know: What canvas has not been really, like, messed with? So we started this toilet-seat collection.”

Apparently, while other twentysomething Hollywood types busy themselves with checking in to and out of rehab, LaBeouf and his entourage—the same gang of friends he’s had since his boyhood in Echo Park, a largely working-class Latino neighborhood that’s home to Dodger Stadium—spend their weekends whittling toilet seats and spray-painting them with sayings like "pooperazzi" and "high end for your rear end"."

On his acting role-models, "LaBeouf says that his role models are the “stand and deliver” types, guys like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, who don’t feel the need to “change it up every time or come up with the mannerism that makes each character different. You just feel the performance, and you care immensely, because it’s coming from an honest place.” He can be very modest about his looks and talent, but it’s clear he has a canny sense of his place in the business. “The [Ryan] Goslings of the world are incredible to watch,” he says. “But they make character pieces. It’s not that I’m not interested in making those, it’s just that I really enjoy watching movies like the ones I’m making, where there’s a lot happening—big-ensemble, orchestral types of movies and not just a solo act.”

On his loose bowels as a youngster and flying poo (on the phone to his mother for confirmation), "Ma, Ma, tell him about the karate class at the YMCA.”

“Oh yeah. Karate class was very sweet, because you were all strong in your karate suit, and then all of a sudden a little brown ball would fall out of your clothes on the floor.”

“Ma, Ma, you remember when I was doing those kicking exercises in the gi [karate uniform]? You remember what happened with the kick that I did? My last kick in karate class?”

“What? The piece that flew?”

“Yeah, the piece that flew and hit the wall. Remember that piece?”

“You guys have a good day.”

“I love you. Bye, Ma."