BANK ROLED: Shia LaBeouf, in a 2011 “Transformers” film, is seeking repayment of a loan. (
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“Transformers” star Shia LaBeouf is an ingrate who sponged off his uncle before rising to fame — then sued the struggling relative to recoup $800,000 he loaned him, the man says in court papers.
The 27-year-old actor was raised in Los Angeles by a single mom, Shayna, who “lived like a gypsy, doing odd jobs like designing jewelry,” the uncle, Barry Saide, said yesterday in response to a summons filed by LaBeouf in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“Had I thought that Shayna and Shia would take this extraordinary step and seek to impoverish me, I never would have borrowed a dollar from Shia,” Saide said.
Saide said his employment-agency business was in need of cash during the 2009 financial crisis, so he turned to his nephew, who has pulled in $20 million for his roles in the “Transformers” series and $8million to star in Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” sequel.
When he loaned Saide the funds in August 2009, LaBeouf told him not to worry about the expense because he “had more money than he could ever need,” the papers allege.
Saide says he had always been generous with his sister and nephew.
“Prior to Shia’s ascendancy to film stardom . . . I loaned Shayna hundreds of thousands of dollars to assist in the support of Shayna and Shia,” he said in court papers.
“I never sought repayment of this money; Shayna, Shia and I are family.”
“I borrowed the money in light of the long history of my having provided financial support to my sister, Shayna, and her son — my nephew — Shia, when they needed it,” he said.
Speaking to The Post from her LA home yesterday, Shayna LaBeouf laughed off Saide’s claim that he supported them.
“He has his own interpretation of life,” she chuckled.
“He’s going to do what he has to do. That’s Barry.”
She said she was unaware Saide responded to the summons she and LaBeouf had quietly filed in May.
“You caught me off guard. I didn’t know that Barry is doing this,” she said.
Shia LaBeouf has acknowledged his unusual upbringing. With a heroin-addict father mostly absent, he was raised by a free-spirited hippie.
“It was really bizarre when my friends were there. You’ve got your little buds over, and Mom’s, like, playing naked connect the dots or whatever,” he told Vanity Fair in 2009.
“She’s in the middle of goddess-group time, where it’s literally a bunch of naked women tracing auras around one another’s bodies with incense.”
LaBeouf confessed in 2011 that, having grown up poor, he feels “real shame” about his wealth and boasted of living without a driver or assistant in a modest part of LA in a $1million home.
His rep didn’t return calls.