In light of his recent plagiarism scandal and criticism of his dealings with the subject, Shia LaBeouf has resorted to his Twitter account to announce that he is leaving the public spotlight.
"In light of the recent attacks on my artistic integrity, I am retiring from all public life. My love goes out to those who have supported me."
This comes a few days after he tweeted a cease and desist letter from Daniel Clowes' lawyer requesting that he take control of the situation and make it right. LaBeouf openly admitted to plagiarizing Clowes' graphic novel, David Boring, and took the step to share storyboards for a future project that also was lifting more of Clowes' work. In his attempt to apologize about the situation, he also plagiarized his apologies and the world has pretty much made the point directly to LaBeouf to get his shit together. His response seems to be to just leave the public eye which he has kind of done before, so I take this with a grain of salt. I'm sure he is just trying to focus the attention on himself as he always does. I say that after remembering the stink he made about vowing to never work with a major studio again after his bad experiences on the Transformers films. The only person to come to his defense is his Even Stevens co-star, Christy Carlson Romano. She stated, ""He’s always just honored his artistic instincts, even when he was 12 years old to about 15 or 16 as we worked together. This is not just some breakdown, like some other child actors. This isn't some emotional neediness. This is something that he's actively doing."
I'm not sorry to say I won't miss you, Shia. I haven't liked you since Disturbia.
