Shia LaBeouf is the April cover boy for GQ Magazine, all to promote his role in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, with Michael Douglas and Carey Mulligan. As such, GQ went for a really obvious photo shoot, with Shia in lots of suits, surrounded by office crap, like phones and file cabinets. Considering Shia can wear the hell out of a suit, I’m a little disappointed with the photos. He still looks too young for me. That being said, I would still nail it to the wall. Sigh… does wanting to nail Shia make me a cougar?

Here are some excerpts from Shia’s cover profile… he’s actually a really interesting, intelligent young man. Oh, and I love how he name-checks the Kardashians. He had me laughing:

On the Wall Street trading floors where he went to learn the banking ropes:
“I thought my life was pretty wild. I’m Richie Rich. I land in New York, secretly thinking I’m like the coolest guy in the world. I’ve been on the cover of GQ! But then I met these guys, and it’s humbling. It’s the most sex-drugs-and-rock-‘n’-roll atmosphere that exists on the planet. I was hanging out with some wild human beings.”

On getting past the stereotypes of Wall Street traders:
“It’s easy to villainize these guys with the big paychecks,” he says. “But they’re not all bad. I’m a pretty left-wing character, and I come from whatever collar is lower than blue. But meeting these guys really opened my mind a lot. I’ve never seen people with more drive and determination in my life.”

On his relationship with co-star and girlfriend Carey Mulligan:
“I never really had anything in my life that was off-limits,” he says, visibly trying to control his natural inclination to share, to think out loud, to let his voice run free. “But with this, just out of respect, I just don’t want to f-ck around. She’s an unbelievably thought-provoking actress, the most talented actress I’ve ever met in my life, by leaps and bounds. Neither one of us are fame whores. It works out. It’s not like we’re the premiere couple; we’re not the red-carpet king and queen.”

On his widely-publicized car crash:
“I’d be watching the news, and they’d play my car crash, and every once in a while Kim Kardashian’s sister would jump on TV and preach to me from the red carpet about how to live my f-cking life. And I’m so upset, man. I’m so angry. Because this accident was not caused by me. I got hit. I had a green. This f-cker ran a red light. And he flipped my truck, and he shoveled it on my hand. And my fingers are in the street… they’re off, they’re under the truck door, man. This is fake, dude,” he says, lifting his newly reconstructed hand. “This is hip bone and the skin that was left over…”

On his newfound hobby, trading:
“I trade in my boxers now. I’m up early for the markets. I’m real-time all day long.” He loves the game and the thrill and the nerves of the market; and the market, it seems, loves him right back. As of the morning of our lunch, Shia says his online Schwab Active Trading account had grown to close to $450,000.

On working with Oliver Stone:
“He is a doctor of human manipulation,” Shia says of Oliver Stone. He means it as a compliment. “One of the first things you do with Oliver,” Shia says, “is you start talking about your personal life. You give it all to him at the beginning, and then he has these strings with which he can f*@& with you. He regurgitates this stuff at inopportune moments. He will just come up and whisper a phrase in your ear, sing a song, mention something about your dad, and—pow!—it puts you in a different world.”

On his co-star Michael Douglas, whose son was recently arrested for trafficking cocaine and crystal meth and faces a long prison term:
“Michael Douglas was an open wound on the set,” Shia says. “That dude is in pain. He was emotional putty on the set. A struggling man. We filmed a struggling man.”…Stone and Douglas wrestled all the time on-set, says Shia. “That is their process. They f-cking go at it like rams, all day long, every day. They know that they feed off each other in a way that they don’t get with anybody else, but they hated each other.”

On being manipulated by Oliver Stone:
“We’d be on the street, and Oliver would just say, ‘Go to that bar, get f-cked-up, and come back.’ I’d walk over, get smashed, and go back to work. He would really f-ck with me when I was smashed. I get aggressive when I’m smashed, and he’d film that. He would just open you up completely, make you f-cking naked-and then call, ‘Action.'”

[From GQ]

How much do I love this kid? I adore what he says about Carey Mulligan. It looks like he slowly learning how to be in an adult relationship and not act like a douche. And I love the image of Shia day-trading in his underwear. I read in Vanity Fair that when Shia got the part, he opened up a brokerage account with $50,000 and tried to learn by experience what it’s like to live and die by the stock market. Which is really cool and genuine, I think. But considering Shia’s addictive personality, he might want to keep a tighter reign on that sh-t, you know? Because it’s just gambling without slot machines.

GQ photos courtesy of GQ online.