While much of Hollywood spent the first week of the new year primping and preparing for awards season, beleaguered actor Shia LaBeouf was some 120 miles from the glitz and glamour, quietly receiving a religious sacrament.
The 37-year-old “Transformers” star was officially confirmed into the Catholic Church during mass at Old Mission Santa Inés Parish in Solvang, California.
“We made sure only a few people knew about it,” Brother Alex Rodriquez, LaBeouf’s confirmation sponsor and friend, told The Post of the ceremony. “We didn’t want any press or anything that would disrupt the service. The church was full but the majority [of the congregation] didn’t know.”
Instead the news was announced in a Facebook post by the Capuchin Franciscans, Western America Province — an order with whom LaBeouf embedded in 2021 to prepare for the title role of “Padre Pio,” a movie about the late Italian priest who was canonized as a saint in 2002.
At the time the actor began studying with the order, his career seemed to flatline and his personal life was imploding over horrific allegations of abuse by two ex-girlfriends.
But nearly four years later, those who have helped him on his spiritual journey — which included studying the Gospel, attending Latin mass and even speaking with an exorcist, all while living out of his Ford pickup truck — say LaBeouf is a changed man who has fully accepted God into his life.
“The way he says it, he had nothing. He lost his reputation and his career,” said Rodriguez. “I met someone whose life fell apart. But the person he is now isn’t the person he was before.”
According to a December 2020 lawsuit filed by singer FKA Twigs (née Tahliah Barnett), LaBeouf was abusive, violent and gave her a sexually transmitted disease when they dated from 2018-2019.
Another ex, Karolyn Pho, made similar allegations in Twigs’ lawsuit — saying that a drunken LaBeouf once pinned her to a bed and head-butted hard enough to draw blood.
“I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations,” LaBeouf said in a statement to the NY Times last year, adding that he had a “history of hurting the people closest to me.”
He also has a history of bizarre behavior, including wearing a paper bag — emblazoned with the words “I am not famous anymore” — over his head on a Berlin Film Festival red carpet in 2014.
That same year, he invited the public to spend time with him for an interactive performance-art exhibit in Los Angeles; later, LaBeouf told Dazed that he had been raped by one of the gallery guests.
In another art experiment, in 2016, he tweeted out his geographic coordinates and invited fans to come find him.
He’s been arrested multiple times for disorderly conduct — including once at a Broadway performance of “Cabaret” — and was seen on a 2017 video making racist comments to police.
Twigs’ complaint came on the heels of mounting legal trouble for the actor, including petty theft and assault charges, stemming from a September 2020 altercation in Los Angeles.
In May 2021, he was ordered by a judge to attend therapy and anger-management classes, wear a SoberLink device and submit to random alcohol testing.
“At this point, I am so nuclear, even my own mother won’t talk to me,” LaBeouf told Bishop Robert Barron in a wide-ranging 2022 interview in which he admitted to being suicidal and broken.
But an unexpected lifeline via Zoom came in the summer 2021, from film director Abel Ferrara (“Bad Lieutinant”).
Bronx-born Ferrara, who now lives in Rome, was making a movie about Padre Pio, the Italian saint marked with stigmata.
The director was looking for an actor to take on the intense role when someone he knew suggested LaBeouf.
Ferrara, himself a former addict, told The Post that, when he reached out, LaBeouf “had already seen the light and made the change but it was early on in his sobriety and acceptance. We started talking, man-to-man stuff. There were no agents involved.”
With “no start date or no contract” for the movie, according to Ferrara, LaBeouf drove his Ford pickup from Los Angeles to the Old Mission Santa Ines to learn about Padre Pio from the Capuchin friars there.
Arriving unannounced, he slept in a tent pitched in the bed of his truck.
“After a day, [the brothers] knock on the door of the pick up truck and he says, ‘I am the actor who will Padre Pio’ — who is like the Joe Namath of that group,” Ferrara said. “They invited him in. He began doing the research but also the work he needed to do to turn his life around.”
While Ferrara describes a leap of faith, LaBeouf admitted to Barron that seeking out the friars was “ego driven” and a path to Hollywood redemption.
But, after spending about five months with the Franciscans, he experienced a personal religious awakening.
“Pio saved my life,” he told Barron. “My life was a mess. I had hurt a lot of people. I had deep shame and deep guilt. It’s formative to how this all happened to me.”
LaBeouf’s rep declined comment.
Rodriguez said there were parallels between the actor and the 20th-century saint whose stigmata — marks on the skin corresponding to those of Jesus’s crucifixion wounds — has been questioned by skeptics.
“Shia recognized himself in Padre Pio, who was, in a sense, exiled and misunderstood,” said Rodriguez.
LaBeouf, whose late mother Shayna Saide was “hippie Jewish,” made his Bar Mitzvah at 13 and, according to Rodriguez, was baptized by his Methodist-preacher uncle, but apparently didn’t have any real connection with Judaism or another organized religion.
But as he researched Pio and learned about the Latin mass, including with the help of friend Mel Gibson, LaBeouf realized this was more profound than a movie role, Rodriguez said.
LaBeouf also started RCIA, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, through which adults who have been baptized as Christians can enter the Catholic Church.
Rodriguez was LaBeouf’s right-hand man and also had a role in “Padre Pio.”
He said the actor planned to be confirmed once they returned from Italy, where Ferrara made the film and where they visited Rome, Assisi and the Vatican.
Then LaBeouf’s wife, Mia Goth, with whom he reconciled in 2020, gave birth to their daughter, Isabel.
He also filmed “Megalopolis,” directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Nonetheless, Rodriguez said he’s remained just as close with the actor.
“Some thought that his interest would wane once the filming of the Padre Pio movie was complete, but that didn’t happen,” Bishop Barron told The Post. “I learned that he wanted to be confirmed about six months ago when he reached out and asked if I’d be willing to perform the ceremony.”
Barron described the day as “joyous.”
LaBeouf told Rodriguez he’d like to become a deacon in the church.
“Fatherhood has helped him stay humbled and rooted,” said Rodriguez, adding that Mia and Isabel occasionally attend mass with the actor.
LaBeouf, who is set to film “Assassination” with Al Pacino, may have his spiritual life intact, but the lawsuit with FKA Twigs is set to go to trial in November.
“The lawsuit/trial has been delayed a couple of times, it’s still not resolved. There’s a lot of kicking the can,” said an industry insider.
Another Hollywood source is cynical about LaBeouf’s newly pious life.
“He’s not typical, or easy,” said the industry source. “He played a priest in a movie and it’s on brand for him to take on a role and then blur the lines of real life. He’s certainly gotten a lot of publicity, a lot of people turn to religion but don’t have to announce it.”
Barron said LaBeouf’s enduring friendship with the Friars is proof of his commitment to Catholicism.
“Redemption is a moment to moment, day by day thing. Like Springsteen said, you gotta prove it all night,” Ferrara said of the actor. “I’m rooting for him.”
