Shia LaBeouf revealed during an interview that he is on friendly terms with the officer who arrested him back in 2017, according to multiple reports.
The Hollywood actor, who had been arrested back in 2017 for public drunkenness, recently gave a shoutout to his arresting officer on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show on Nov. 6, according to Fox News. When asked whether LaBeouf still kept in contact with the officer, the actor responded with, “Officer Bryant! That’s my guy!”
During the show, LaBeouf talked about his friendship with the officer, who had invited the actor to go fishing, according to the news outlet.
Jimmy Kimmel told the actor that he’d probably never expect to become fishing buddies with the officer, to which the actor responded with, “Oh no, I [expletive] hated him. But you know, life, you know?”
The actor credited the officer for changing his life back in 2017. It was during this time that the actor spent time in rehab which partly inspired his writing of “Honey Boy,” the actor’s autobiographical film, USA Today reported. During an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, the actor said that he penned down the dark parts of his life and it turned into a script, to which he sent to his friend. That same script went on to become a movie.
USA Today reported that LaBeouf won a breakthrough screenwriting award for the film at the Hollywood Film Awards on Nov. 3, where he thanked the police officer.
“I want to thank the police officer who arrested me in Georgia. For changing my life,” Shia LaBeouf said during his acceptance speech, which earned him a few laughs from the audience, who did not think that he was serious, according to USA Today.
“Honey Boy” is a film about LaBeouf’s life in which the actor played the alcohol and abusive father of a child actor, Fox News reported.
According to the interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, in the autobiographical film, LaBeouf played his own father in a recount of his life as a child Disney star, and how his role reflected the relationship he had his father. The media outlet reported that during the casting of the autobiographical film, the actor had to lie to his father about the person playing him.
“My dad’s a pretty off-color character. He wasn’t, like, too enthused about me be playing him….So I lied to him and told him that Mel Gibson would be playing him,” LaBeouf said. After his father signed the paperwork and LaBeouf went home, “I said, ‘Listen, man, it’s not like that.'”
