Shia LaBeouf's Dad Got Slapped by Sigourney Weaver on Set

When you’re a teenager on a movie set, your parent is supposed to be there to keep you safe and grounded. But for Shia LaBeouf, having his father Jeffrey Craig LaBeouf around during filming of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle turned into a liability that left a trail of awkwardness and tension.

At the Fanboy Expo fan convention in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Saturday, July 11, the 40-year-old actor opened up about how his dad’s behavior essentially torpedoed his relationships with his co-stars. Fresh out of prison at the time, Jeffrey would spend the set hitting on every woman in sight—and according to Shia, Lucy Liu couldn’t stand him. The actress would make deliberate detours around Shia’s trailer just to avoid crossing paths with his father. It’s a darkly comedic image: one of Hollywood’s most talented actresses literally drawing circles around a kid’s workspace to dodge an unwanted admirer.

But it didn’t stop there. Shia revealed during the Transformers reunion panel that his dad’s antics extended to the set of Holes, where he apparently got a reality check from none other than Sigourney Weaver. When Jeffrey hit on the then-76-year-old icon, she didn’t waste time with words—she slapped him. Direct. Effective. The kind of response that probably didn’t need an HR department to back it up.

The bigger picture here is complicated. Jeffrey was convicted of attempted rape in 1981 and spent time in prison until 1983, eventually registering as a sex offender. Yet Shia’s relationship with his father has been equally conflicted—he depicted him as abusive in the semi-autobiographical film Honey Boy (2019), only to later backpedal during a 2022 podcast appearance, calling that portrayal“f***ing nonsense”and insisting his father was loving, if fractured and flawed.

These stories serve as a reminder of how complicated family dynamics can be, especially when they play out on professional sets where other people’s comfort and safety are at stake. Shia was just a teenager trying to work, his co-stars were trying to do their jobs, and everyone involved was navigating a situation that probably should’ve been handled differently from the start.