Shia LaBeouf compares himself to Timothée Chalamet wanting to be great: ‘On him, it’s cute. On me, it wasn’t’

Shia LaBeouf doesn’t see why Timothée Chalamet gets to have all the fun.

The Transformers star lamented the reputational differences between himself and the Call Me By Your Name actor, with whom he believes he shares a drive to achieve thespian greatness. 

“I hear Timothée Chalamet get up and he says something like, ‘I want to be great,'” LaBeouf said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I so know the feeling. On him, it’s cute. On me, it wasn’t cute. You know what I’m saying?”

LaBeouf was likely referring to Chalamet’s acceptance speech at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards, where the Complete Unknown actor stated his intention to enter the canon of legendary screen actors. “I know we’re in a subjective business, but I’m really in pursuit of greatness. People don’t usually talk like this, but I want to be one of the greats,” Chalamet said. 

“I’m inspired by the greats. I’m inspired by the greats here tonight,” the Wonka actor continued in his speech. “I’m as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there.”

Elsewhere in the THR interview, LaBeouf discussed his own drive for artistic excellence. “Man, I’ve been searching for a long time,” he said. “I’m really like a pure actor. When I was young, I didn’t think that I required much help to do what I do. I was completely narcissistic and fearful and had a lack of trust. I’ve been under the tutelage of a lot of dudes who tried to mentor me, but I just didn’t trust them, or didn’t like what they made or whatever.”

When asked if he views himself as a narcissist, LaBeouf responded, “To get into this field, there’s a certain level of ego — a certain ego sickness that gets you into acting. And now I’m trying to figure out what the healthy version of that looks like.”

LaBeouf also touched on his insecurity and ego while recalling a past disagreement with Alec Baldwin, with whom he was set to star in a stage production of Orphans in the early 2010s before dropping out due to creative differences. “By the time Baldwin got there, it was almost unfair,” LaBeouf said. “So he’s dealing with both my fractured little weak ego, right? All this hard prep that I’d done for two years, and my desperate need to show him all my prep, or that he would accept me somehow. I was so insecure. Well, that got contentious in the room. Then he got competitive.”

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

The actor said that he later enrolled in the acting class that the 30 Rock star taught at NYU. “It got insane. But me and him are good because he’s gone through a lot. I’ve gone through a lot,” he said. “We’ve both been able to send each other love and make it right before all the madness happened on both sides. We made it right. He’s a good guy. He’s just like me. Fear will make you move different. I found it came from having absolutely no spiritual life.”