Actor:
LaBeouf has said that he initially became an actor because his family was broke, not because he wanted to pursue an acting career. He became well known among young audiences after playing Louis Stevens in the Disney Channel weekly program Even Stevens, a role for which he was cast three months after being signed by his agent. LaBeouf also played in the Disney Channel hit Tru Confessions where he played a mentally challenged kid with a sister who made a documentary about his disablity. His father, at the time just released from rehab, served as his on-set parent and the two bonded.LaBeouf was awarded a Daytime Emmy Award for the role of Louis and has said that he "grew up on that show" and that his childhood was "kind of lost," although his being cast in the show was the "best thing" that has happened to him.During this time period, LaBeouf also appeared in sketch shows on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 2003, he appeared in another Disney production, Holes, as Stanley "Caveman" Yelnats IV, opposite Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight and Tim Blake Nelson. While filming Holes, Voight gave LaBeouf a book on acting, and this made LaBeouf realize acting could be more than a job. The film was a moderate box office success. Steven Spielberg was also a fan of LaBeouf in Holes, saying he reminded him of a young Tom Hanks.
That same year, he was heavily featured in the HBO documentary show Project Greenlight, which chronicled the making of the independent film The Battle of Shaker Heights. He also appeared in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle as Max Petroni, an orphan whom the Angels end up protecting. He had a small role in I, Robot (2004) and appeared in the action-horror film Constantine (2005), opposite Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz, and in the Disney film The Greatest Game Ever Played, playing Francis Ouimet, a real-life golf player from a poor family who won the 1913 U.S. Open Championship. In 2006, LaBeouf co-starred in the ensemble film drama Bobby, which called for him to do his first nude scene when he strips naked while on an LSD trip. LaBeouf has said that he is not the "All-American Disney role model" and chose to appear in some of his film roles in order to "curse as much as possible" and "age [himself] publicly" after his Disney roles, specifying that Disney is "great and all" and a "nurturing place" but "dehabilitating for an actor", being "one constant string of same".He has also said that he enjoyed being a child actor and hated school.
Comedian:
LaBeouf would "create things, story lines and fictitious tales" during his childhood, and practiced stand-up comedy around his neighborhood as an "escape" from a hostile environment. He began performing stand-up and "talking dirty" at comedy clubs (including the The Ice House in Pasadena) at the age of ten (describing his appeal as having "disgustingly dirty" material and a "50-year-old mouth on the 10-year-old kid"). LaBeouf subsequently found an agent through the Yellow Pages, being taken on after doing his stand-up act for her and pretending to be his own manager, promoting himself in the third person.