Chris Luckett

Before consciously veering off the mainstream career path he was comfortably cruising along, Shia LaBeouf had a great track record with Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg helped shepherd LaBeouf into his period of greatest public success, on Disturbia, Eagle Eye, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and the first three Transformers movies.

In a new interview with Variety, LaBeouf called out Spielberg as being a root of his disillusionment with Hollywood, not holding back his disdain for the celebrated director.

“You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” said LaBeouf. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who’s in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a f—ing company.”

LaBeouf also knocked the way Spielberg rans his sets, criticizing how stiflingly planned out they all were.

“Spielberg’s sets are very different,” he said. “Everything has been so meticulously planned. ‘[You’ve] got to get this line out in 37 seconds.’ You do that for five years, you start to feel like not knowing what you’re doing for a living.”

This isn’t the first time LaBeouf has had less-than-kind words to say about Spielberg and the movies they made together. He first lambasted their partnership’s output in a 2010 Los Angeles Times interview, when he said Spielberg “dropped the ball” with 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

(Source: Variety, Los Angeles Times)