NEW YORK – Shia LaBeouf and Alec Baldwin never ended up sharing a Broadway stage as planned last year, but real-life dramatics landed both of them Thursday in a distinctly less celebrated venue: Manhattan criminal courts.
Both stars appeared in courtrooms a few blocks apart for separate disorderly conduct cases. LaBeouf is charged with disrupting a Broadway performance, while Baldwin was accused of getting belligerent with police who said they stopped him for riding a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street.
Their shared court date was just a coincidence, but it paired stars who have become known for acting up, not just for acting.
“Looks like you have a short fuse,” Manhattan Criminal Court Judge John DeLury told Baldwin while looking over the allegations against him; they’re violations, not crimes. After Baldwin repeatedly said he’d pay a fine for the May 13 encounter — though the judge said he was just asking for an apology — DeLury put the case on track to be dismissed if the actor avoids re-arrest for six months. It’s a common outcome for low-level cases in Manhattan.
“Can you stay out of trouble, Alexander?” DeLury asked.
“Sure, sure,” Baldwin said.
“Be a good boy from now on. Have a good day!”
Meanwhile, LaBeouf’s lawyer and prosecutors said they were trying to resolve his case. He’s accused in court papers of playing a boorish role in the audience at “Cabaret” last month, smoking cigarettes, yelling at the actors onstage, and swearing at security guards and hollering as he was escorted out: “Do you know who I am?”
The actor, whose publicist has said the episode stemmed from an alcohol problem and that LaBeouf has since gotten treatment, stood solemnly before a judge during the brief appearance. He and his lawyer, G. Robert Gage, declined to comment as they left court amid a swarm of cameras and microphones. LaBeouf is due back in court in September.
LaBeouf, 28, and Baldwin, 56, were slated to co-star last year in a revival of Lyle Kessler’s play Orphans, but LaBeouf pulled out over creative disagreements — and then publicly tweeted private emails from Baldwin and others involved in the show. (“Sorry for my part of a dis-agreeable situation,” LaBeouf wrote to Baldwin in one message; Baldwin apparently wrote back: “I don’t have an unkind word to say about you. You have my word.”)
Best known for starting in the first three Transformers movies, LaBeouf has made headlines for his off-screen behaviour in the past year.
He apologized this winter for borrowing the story line and dialogue for a short film from a graphic novel writer. In February, he walked out of a Berlin Film Festival news conference for the movie Nymphomaniac Volume I and then wore a paper bag — emblazoned with “I am not famous anymore” — over his head at the red carpet premiere.
Baldwin, whose career has included Emmy Awards for 30 Rock and Oscar and Tony nominations, has developed an ornery reputation in real life.
A voicemail of him berating daughter Ireland Baldwin came to light in 2007 (he later said the message horrified him), he was kicked off a plane in 2011 after refusing to stop playing a cellphone game, and he’s had a series of run-ins with news photographers. After using an anti-gay slur in one such encounter last fall, he was suspended from his ultimately short-lived MSNBC show; Baldwin apologized and said he hadn’t meant to offend anyone.
In February, Baldwin wrote a New York magazine cover story decrying tabloid coverage of his comings-and-goings in New York City, saying he probably needs to move elsewhere.
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