Shia Lebouf’s Meltdown

Twenty-seven year old actor Shia Lebouf is someone I know from his film Transformers and another earlier one, Disturbia, back in 2007. He also made appearances in other movies such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Constantine, and Eagle Eye among others.

Recently, however, Shia has been experiencing a meltdown of sorts which can be noticed in his behavior—both online and offline. Since January 13^th of this year, he has been repeatedly tweeting the phrase “I am not famous anymore.” His actions became even weirder from then on. At one point, he was at a press conference with other panelists which included Uma Thurman, Stacy Martin, and Christian Slater, among others, and according to a source from The Hollywood Reporter, Shia answered only one question after he was asked about having done several sex scenes in the film by Lars Von Trier.

He quoted the French soccer player Eric Cantona by saying “When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.” After that, he simply said, “Thank you very much,” and proceeded to walk away from the stage.

To make things even stranger than they already are, Shia wore a paper bag over his head during the premier of his film called Nymphomaniac, Volume 1. He did this at the red carpet of the 64th Berlinale International Film Festival and garnered so much attention. On the paper bag was written the same phrase he had been tweeting, “I am not famous anymore.” The tuxedo-clad Shia wore the paper bag with those words written while he peered from two eye cutouts.

He had expressed his distress over Twitter, and he even mentioned “retiring from all public life” in one of his tweets. He even had legal problems when he tweeted Michael Kump’s cease and desist letter after Shia plagiarized Daniel Clowe’s HowardCountour.com—a short film. Shia removed the tweet, and then tweeted it again, even more proof of his having quite an unstable phase.

However frustrating it may be, there is no clear reason yet as to why Shia is being like this. I really wonder what’s happening to him, because it would be a waste of such great talent!