Shia LaBeouf has had quite the year. In his first television interview in months, the 28-year-old actor opened up about going to jail and feeling unloved, and how his mother helped him get back on track.
During an appearance on NBC's "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," due to air on Friday, LaBeouf broke his silence about what prompted his "bad boy" behavior, and dished details about getting arrested during the middle of a Broadway show in New York and allegedly entering rehab for alcohol treatment, according to Us Weekly.
"Man, I went through like an existential crisis, which turned into kind of like, a, explorations," the actor said. "I had some hiccups, some judgment errors."
In February, the "Transformers" actor wore a paper bag over his head, which read, "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE," during the red carpet premiere of his film "Nymphomaniac." To apologize for his actions, LaBeouf held an art exhibit in Los Angeles titled #IAMSORRY.
"There was a lot of negativity online, so I thought: 'All right, let's see what all this negativity is all about. Let's invite it in,'" he explained to DeGeneres. "We had this one-on-one situation where we'd invite one person at a time and they [could] do whatever they wanted... I was sitting in there broken. I was really truly apologetic, so I was sort of like apologizing to the public in a way."
LaBeouf confessed he was surprised by the reactions he received.
"Once they got in there, everything changed. They stopped looking at me as like an object. They started looking at me as like a human and they were very loving," he said.
The actor, who said he felt abandoned as a kid in the industry, admitted that going to jail shocked him out of his bad behavior. In June, he was escorted out of Broadway's "Cabaret" for disrupting the show, and was also accused of spitting on a police officer.
"Jail was quite scary," he confessed. "I was there for... I think 24 hours, 25 hours. But this is the worst time. I really went all the way with it. They put a Hannibal mask on me and a led jacket. It was very scary."
He also credited his mother, who raised him as a single parent, for helping him straighten out, and said that running 12 miles a day helps him clear his head.
"Running is big in my life," he said. "I was running a lot before, but I really picked it up a bit. It's become like my salvation, running."
