Shia LaBeouf Had to Make Amends with Mentor Jon Voight After Threatening to Fight Him Over Trump: ‘I Love Him’

(Photo by Rocco Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

Shia LaBeouf revealed that he had to make amends with fellow actor and mentor Jon Voight after threatening to physically battle him over his support for President Donald Trump.

LaBeouf, 39, told director Mike Figgis in an interview that a combination of doing Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and getting sober forced him to confront his issues with Voight.

“I was in the midst of doing my ninth step in this program I’m in, and I had to go make amends to Voight because Voight’s politics and mine are very different. I love him very much,” LaBeouf said, according to Entertainment Weekly.

LaBeouf, 39, and Voight, 86, both worked on 2003’s Holes and 2007’s Transformers before Megalopolis, Coppola’s self-financed passion project released in 2024.

“He was like my mentor from a young age. He was like the first real actor I ever met, and he’s the first one who put me on to [Dustin] Hoffman’s repertoire,” LaBeouf said.

Voight has long been vocal about his support for Trump. He was recently named one of three special ambassadors to Hollywood by Trump, along with Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone.

LaBeouf said Voight educated him early on film, but their relationship soured when Trump first ran for president in 2016.

“We had a big fight on the phone where I told him I was going to come to his house and we were going to fist fight, and I hung up the phone,” he said. “Didn’t talk to him for years.”

LaBeouf set up a performance art project timed with Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The actor and collaborators set up a camera and invited people to declare, “He will not divide us.” The project was eventually shut down after trolls took advantage and locations expressed safety concerns.