“Smoking and yelling” Shia LaBeouf charged with disorderly conduct

Actor handcuffed and in tears following arrest during a performance of the musical Cabaret in New York

Actor Shia LaBeouf was removed from the Studio 54 theater in Manhattan and arrested last night after disrupting a performance of the musical Cabaret. LaBeouf, the former star of the Transformers movie franchise, was smoking and yelling during the performance, the police said. Officers escorted him out of the show during intermission. LaBeouf (28) was charged with one count of criminal trespassing and two counts of disorderly conduct, according to the police. He remained in police custody Thursday night.

A spokesman for the producer of Cabaret, the Roundabout Theatre Company, said the actor was disruptive during the first act of the two-act musical. Benj Pasek, who was nominated for a 2014 Tony Award for his work on the score of A Christmas Story, wrote on Twitter that he saw LaBeouf handcuffed and in tears as six officers surrounded him outside the theater.

A lawyer for LaBeouf did not immediately return an email seeking comment Thursday night. The outburst followed a string of erratic behavior attributed to the actor. LaBeouf, whose films include Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, was set to make his Broadway debut in spring 2013 opposite Alec Baldwin in Orphans but withdrew before the show's opening because of creative differences with the show's producers.

In January, he wrote on Twitter that he was retiring from public life after he was accused of plagiarizing a comic in his screenplay, HowardCantour.com. The film, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival before it was released in December, contained uncredited passages from Justin M. Damiano by Daniel Clowes.

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LaBeouf apologized on Twitter, saying that he got lost in the creative process and failed to credit the writer.

– The New York Times News Service