In what appears to be a shockingly accurate marriage of actor and material, famously disruptive movie star Shia LaBeouf has been cast as famously eruptive tennis player John McEnroe in the upcoming biopic “Borg/McEnroe.” The film is to be a dramatization of a heated, decades-spanning rivalry between McEnroe and Swedish player Bjorn Borg, who will be portrayed by Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason.
Sitting in the director’s chair for this project is Janus Metz, best known for his damning Afghan war documentary “Armadillo,” which won the Grand Prize at Cannes Critics Week when it premiered there in 2010, as well as the third episode of “True Detective” season two.
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LaBeouf addressed the role during a press conference for Andrea Arnold’s Cannes sensation “American Honey” (our review), in which the actor plays a charismatic magazine salesman named Jake. In tackling the juicy role of McEnroe, the actor doesn’t appear to be shying away from potentially unflattering parallels that exist between him and the famously contentious tennis legend.
“Jake [the actor’s character from ‘American Honey’] is me. So is McEnroe. That’s it, man,” the actor told the crowds at Cannes. “I understand these people, I empathize with them. I get it. You turn things up and turn things down. It’s me.” LaBeouf remained mum on the subject of his physical preparation for the role, though he did mention that his backhand was “getting there”.
Stellan Skarsgård, who co-starred with LaBeouf in Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” films, has a co-starring role in the upcoming picture: he will play Borg’s steely, pragmatic coach and mentor Lennart Bergelin. But the main attraction should definitely be LaBeouf playing such an intense, contradictory character. It’s interesting to consider the ways in which the lives of actor and athlete overlap: both are prone to outsized displays of aggressive emotion, and both strove restlessly to be the best at their respective crafts when they were young.
Shooting will begin on “Borg/McEnroe” in the fall. The film is slated for a 2017 release. [THR]