Shia LaBeouf "Retiring" After Whirlwind Year Of Plagiarism, Skywriting, Owls And Nude Pics

Shia LaBeouf has announced that he is "retiring from all public life" after a year of crazy incidents has reached breaking point. It has been a rather strange year for the 27 year-old Even Stevens actor who has branched out into directing. Ready to head down the rabbit hole?

Shia LaBeouf Announces He's Retiring From Public Life.

The L.A-born actor was left red-faced after it emerged that he'd persistently plagiarised other peoples' work, most notably that of graphic novelist Daniel Clowes, and then plagiarised his apology for stealing Clowes' work.

LaBeouf premiered his 11-minute short film Howard Cantour.com at Cannes year but when the film appeared online in December, viewers noted that dialogue and many visual concepts had been taken from and not credited to the Ghost World artist Clowe's "very personal" story, Justin M Damiano. The overlap between the stories, which both featured a conflicted film critic, was too much for Clowes who raged to Buzzfeed: "I actually can't imagine what was going through his mind."

Storyboard for my next short "Daniel Boring" its like Fassbinder meets half-baked Nabokov on Gilligan's Island pic.twitter.com/sarRnqYws4

— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 8, 2014

In a more recent update, LaBeouf tweeted a cease and desist letter allegedly sent from Clowes' lawyer to his own in response to LaBeouf's tweet showing a storyboard for his new short story Daniel Boring, which the lawyer notes is a rip-off of Clowes' acclaimed David Boring. In an even more surreal twist, Shia even described it to his 80,000-strong Twitter followers using the same phrasing as Clowes did in an interview, provoking many to assume that that actor was trying to provoke the artist.

The Actor Has Spiralled Through Some Bizarre Incidents In The Past Year.

After being slammed via Twitter and the media, LaBeouf sent out his own string of apologetic tweets directed at Clowes and trying to account for his major mess-up. "I was wrong, terribly wrong. I owe it to future generations to explain why," the Transformers star tweeted, adding "Copying isn't particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else's idea to produce something new and different IS creative work."

However, it then emerged that the latter of Shia's tweets were an edited but still largely word-for-word lift from the Yahoo! Answers post by a user named Lili in response to the question "Why did Picasso say "good artists copy but great artists steal"?"

Next Page: More bizarre Shia LaBeouf tales.

Shia Apologises

For the past month or so, LaBeouf has sent out a slew of apologies via Twitter: "I can't apologize enough. I'll always be sorry this happened. Trust is hard earned and I messed that up. #Gottadobetter" he wrote. "When I first received the allegations of plagiarism, I could not deny the facts. While the content was not identical, the subject matter was, " said Shia, adding "Mr. Clowes, I can only ask that you view my apology as a stepping stone toward repairing this misunderstanding between us. I'm sorry [...] This is not a publicity stunt."

CLOUD:
- vapor floating in the atmosphere
- remote servers used to SHARE DATA
- to make LESS CLEAR or TRANSPARENT pic.twitter.com/jw9JlEi791

— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) January 1, 2014

The tweets were a little OTT but what Clowes did next took people's beliefs to the limit and directly contradicted his publicity denial. He hired a skywriter to write "I AM SORRY DANIEL CLOWES" in vapour in the sky over Hollywood, despite Clowes living in San Francisco. The final straw came when LaBeouf stole rapper Gucci Mane's tweet in order to explain himself: "Im addicted to lean & that s**t ain't no joke. I can barely remember all the things I've done & said. However there's no excuse 4 skywriting."

If you ever wanted a clearer image of what life inside Shia's head was like then just ask Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint, who reflected on time spent with the star whilst filming The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman. Grint revealed he was astonished to watch the actor actually drop acid for real: "He smashed the place up, got naked and kept seeing this owl. If anything will make you not do drugs, it's watching that," he recalled, via The Guardian.

"He Kept Seeing This Owl" - Rupert Grint Reflects On Time Spent With Shia.

The actor also recently admitted that when auditioning for Lars Von Trier's controversial new movie Nymphomaniac, he'd been asked to send pictures of his penis as part of the casting process. LaBeouf stars alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, and Stellan Skarsgard in the graphic film which follows a sex addict attending group therapy sessions and reliving her sexual experiences.

"In light of the recent attacks against my artistic integrity, I am retiring from all public life," Shia wrote today, adding "My love goes out to those who have supported me" and "#stopcreating."