Shia LaBeouf has opened up about the abuse allegations that were made against him by artist FKA Twigs, acknowledging them as true while stating that he will “owe” for the rest of his life.
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In a recent appearance on actor Jon Bernthal’s podcast Real Ones, LaBeouf addressed the many abuse allegations that were brought against him in a 2020 lawsuit by FKA Twigs. While LaBeouf didn’t mention the artist by name, he did confirm that he had done bad things, without going into too many specifics.
“I hurt that woman,” LaBeouf said (via Variety). “And in the process of doing that, I hurt many other people, and many other people before that woman. I was a pleasure-seeking, selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate, fearful human being…When I think about what my life has become, and what it is now, like what my purpose is now… I need to be useful. And when I look at this #MeToo environment, there’s not a whole lot of dudes that are taking accountability.”
LaBeouf also admitted to “cheating on every woman” that he had ever been with, including doing what he called “manipulative” things such as never telling his partners that he had cold sores. He also said that he realizes he will “owe” for the rest of his life, and has a long list of people to make amends to.
“I f**** up bad,” LaBeouf said. “Like crash and burn type shit. [I] hurt a lot of people, and I’m fully aware of that. And I’m going to owe for the rest of my life.”
LaBeouf also touched on how he felt when the allegations immediately became public, saying that his first reaction was to try and fight them via social media before calling FKA Twigs “a saint” that saved his life in the long term.
“Had she not intervened in my life and not created the avenue for me to experience ego death, I’d either have a really mediocre existence or I’d be dead in full,” LaBeouf said, while also revealing that shortly after the allegations, he contemplated suicide. “I went and loaded up a gun and sat on my table. I was gonna kill myself.”
As of now, LaBeouf says that he believes his purpose in life now is to be “a billboard for a principled way of living,” and seems to hint that his goal is not to follow in the footsteps of other actors accused of things and immediately try and go after the woman or “win a court case.”
“I’m in the tribe of the f***-ups. I’m a very public sinner, a very fallible person in the public sphere,” LaBeouf admitted. “What I think now my purpose is, is to not do… the other examples that we’ve had of how to navigate something like this — which is to go after the woman, or try to win a court case, or get back into a fucking movie or like get back on at all…My purpose, and I mean this with every fiber of my being, is to be instructive with my life, so that I can be an advertisement, like a billboard, for a principled way of living.”
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After dating for about a year after meeting on the set of the 2019 film Honey Boy, FKA Twigs later sued LaBeouf in 2020, alleging the actor of sexual battery, physical, and verbal abuse. The artist claimed that LaBeouf had done a variety of things to her, including being physically violent and strangling her, knowingly infecting her with an STD, and that he shot stray dogs with a gun to get into character for his film The Tax Collector.