'I'd kiss His feet': Shia LaBeouf ponders meeting Jesus after arrest in New Orleans

Actor Shia LaBeouf appeared to become emotional when discussing what he would say if he ever met Jesus during an interview that also touched on his recent arrest for allegedly assaulting several people in New Orleans amid the city's Mardi Gras and Lundi Gras celebrations.

In an interview released on Saturday, YouTuber Andrew Callaghan asked the 39-year-old actor what he would say to Jesus if he met Him. LaBeouf, who is known best for his starring role in "Transformers" and the Disney Channel series "Even Stevens," replied that he "wouldn't say s—" if he met the Lord. 

"But I'd kiss Him," the actor said, his voice cracking with emotion. "I'd kiss His feet. I wouldn't say nothing." 

After taking a moment to compose himself, LaBeouf told Callaghan, "Chill out with these questions, Andrew." The YouTuber responded by saying that he didn't know the question would make the actor emotional.

During the interview, the pair discussed LeBeouf's arrest in connection with a Feb. 17 altercation outside of a business on Royal Street in New Orleans. The actor is accused of hitting at least two people, as The Associated Press reported on Saturday. 

Court records say that the entertainer, who was arrested and charged with battery in relation to the altercation, was arrested again on Saturday and charged with one additional misdemeanor count of simple battery. 

LaBeouf's attorney, Sarah Chervinsky, said that the actor turned himself in to the Orleans Parish jail after learning that the New Orleans police issued a new arrest warrant on Friday.

According to a New Orleans police report, a video of the Feb. 17 incident shows a shirtless LaBeouf shoving an individual to the ground and hitting another person in the face, "causing his nose to possibly dislocate." 

A local entertainer identified as Jeffrey Klein in the police's incident report claimed that he was one of the people LaBeouf attacked on Feb. 17, claiming that the actor threatened his life and shouted about homosexuals.

"He hit me, he connected a few times with punches, he pushed me a few times," the entertainer told AP. 

According to a Feb. 17 statement that the New Orleans Police Department provided to ABC News, officers were called to the scene at 12:45 a.m. after two victims reported that they had been assaulted. The department said that the actor was later taken to a hospital "for treatment of unspecified injuries" before he was arrested and charged.

"I was drunk, and then I felt infringed upon in terms of my proximity," LaBeouf told Callaghan about the incident. "But I wasn't in my right mind, and so it's on me."

The YouTuber asked the former Disney Channel star for more information about the interactions he had with people before the fight broke out and what might have caused the escalation. 

"I have no idea, bro," LaBeouf replied, referencing his Catholic faith after admitting that he doesn't have answers.  

When asked what he meant about being Catholic, the actor said: "I don't know what was going on in my head, but it don't matter. I mean, the truth is, I said words not OK to say."

"I don't want to hurt nobody's feelings. That's what I mean [when I say] I'm a Catholic. I'm wrong for what I did, is what I'm saying," he added. 

The incident in New Orleans is not the entertainer's first run-in with the law, as he was arrested in 2017 on suspicion of public drunkenness, as AP reported at the time. 

In an interview with Bishop Robert Barron of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles that aired in August 2022, LaBeouf opened up about his conversion to Catholicism during a dark season of his life.

"I had a gun on the table. I was out of here. I didn't want to be alive anymore when all this happened, shame like I had never experienced before — the kind of shame that you forget how to breathe, you don't know where to go. You can't go outside and get, like, a taco. But I was also in this deep desire to hold on," he said.

LaBeouf said that his life was a "mess" at the time, but living at a monastery in preparation for his role in the 2022 film "Padre Pio" changed him. The actor played Padre Pio in the movie, an Italian saint who lived in the 20th century. 

The entertainer, who was raised culturally Jewish and once claimed not to believe in God at all, said during the interview that he had "nowhere to go."

"I know now that God was using my ego to draw me to Him, drawing me away from worldly desires," he said. "It was all happening simultaneously. But there would have been no impetus for me to get in my car, drive up [to the monastery] if I didn't think, 'Oh, I'm going to save my career.'"