Jewish-born actor Shia LeBeouf has converted to Christianity.
The actor, who was born to a Jewish mother and a Christian father, said he had “found God” while playing a devout Christian character on the set of the 2014 movie “Fury.”
“I became a Christian man, and not in a f*cking b*llshit way — in a very real way. I could have just said the prayers that were on the page,” LeBeouf said in an intimate conversation with Interview Magazine which features pictures of the 28-year-old in a number of shirtless poses. “But it was a real thing that really saved me…It’s a full-blown exchange of heart, a surrender of control.”
LeBeouf, who was the star of the popular Disney show “Even Stevens” and the enormously successful “Transformers” movie franchise, said “Fury” director David Ayer and fellow co-star Brad Pitt helped him through the conversion process.
LeBeouf had previously identified as Jewish, and had a Bar Mitzvah at age 13. When contributing to a book titled “I am Jewish” in 2004, the actor said it was “beneficial to be Jewish,” and that he had “a personal relationship with God that happens to work within the confines of Judaism. Really, I feel cocky when I say I am Jewish, not bad cocky, but good cocky. Because what I am really saying is that I am one of the few chosen ones out there. I made it; God chose me and I take pride in that,” LeBeouf concluded.
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