The ongoing saga that is Shia LaBeouf's reluctance to just act like a normal person has taken another twist after he turned up to the Berlin film premiere of Nymphomaniac with a paper bag over his head. The bag bore the words 'I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE'.
Happily posing for the red carpet, just, with, um, a bag over his head, one confused paparazzo shouted, 'We'll make you famous, what's your name?'
Weird as it was, that wasn't actually the weirdest point of his day, if you consider he's been tweeting, 'I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE,' every day since 13 January. Earlier he'd walked out of the Berlin Film Festival's earlier press conference for the racy new film.
Co-star Stacy Martin answered a question about the film's many explicit sex scenes, but in the BBC's footage, Shia wasn't willing to play ball. Wearing a baseball cap and a sour expression, he took his time to quote that other unexpectedly pretentious hothead, Eric Cantona, and then got up and left. 'When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much,' he said, repeating verbatim what Cantona said way back in 1995 after he caused a furore by high-kicking a fan during a match. (Just FYI, Shia also paused for water at exactly the same point.)
The question is: is Shia having a genuine breakdown, as opposed to an artsy one – all plagiarism and borrowed aphorisms – or a Joaquin-Phoenix-style faux-meltdown?
What we do know is that Nymphomaniac director Lars Von Trier will surely be glad of the controversy. First off, it'll bring a lot of attention to the film, and secondly, it's exactly the sort of thing he would do. The Danish director hasn't spoken to the press since he got in trouble for making a Nazi joke at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011, and he wore his very own slogan T-shirt to yesterday's premiere, this one saying, 'PERSONA NON GRATA.'
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.