Christy Carlson Romano Could Never "Fully Be There" for Shia LaBeouf

Oct 06, 2026 - 22:12

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Christy Carlson Romano Could Never "Fully Be There" for Shia LaBeouf

Christy Carlson Romano Shares Why She Could Never "Fully Be There" for Onscreen Brother Shia LaBeouf

Christy Carlson Romano couldn't be an older sister to Shia LaBeouf when the cameras stopped rolling.

Although the duo played siblings on Even Stevens for three years, the actress revealed that their onscreen bond never translated to a real-life relationship.

"It was dysfunctional at best," Romano—who was 16 when the show began airing on Disney Channel in 2000—told E! News in an exclusive interview. "It was a little competitive at times. He was a very ambitious child. He really needed to become famous because his home life was really complicated."

"I think that he needed to be the star of Even Stevens, but it was still our show," she continued, explaining that her character Ren Stevens brought in the female demographic of viewers. "They made me much more of a costar character. And it just made sense with his schooling. They needed to be able to use me during times that he would be in school."

Romano posited that LaBeouf—who was 14 when he took on the role of Ren's younger brother Louis Stevens—struggled with the idea that they were both leading the three-season show.

"Initially it was going to be his show," the 42-year-old shared. "That's what fueled his ambition, his competitive streak, and it's unfortunate because I did come to understand that he had this complicated relationship with his dad."

"At the same time," she continued, "I wanted to be there for him, but I knew that I could never really fully be there for him because we had this work-life imbalance."

Navigating her complicated Disney Channel run is just one of the chapters Romano candidly details in her new memoir Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star, out now.

George Lange/Disney Channel via Getty Images

And chief among her recollections from Even Stevens involved overhearing an argument between LaBeouf and his dad Jeffrey LaBeouf (a relationship the Holes actor described as a "negative gift" in a 2014 conversation with Interview magazine).

"I've never heard Shia sound vulnerable before, like a kid," she wrote. "Usually he's bouncing off the walls, acting annoying and crazy, but I feel bad for him. He sounds so small over there on the other side of the thin wall we share. This experience is making me feel like I am in the room with him. I feel so small and helpless as he does."

Before Romano—mom to daughters Isabella, 10, and Sophia, 7, with husband Brendan Rooney—could think about the situation any further, she said they were called back to set. But it did make her speculate about the Honey Boy actor's personal life.

S&S/Simon Element

"Shia doesn't tell me much about his parents," she wrote. "He just jokes to everyone about them and to me they sound like hippies. They didn't push him into acting, and Shia was the one who wanted a career. He looked in a phone book and found his manager when he was eight or something."

"He seems desperate for fame," she continued. "It's really sad because I wonder if his home life is tough. I think it's kind of a miracle he's even functioning."

Although Romano and LaBeouf, now 40, lost touch in the years after Even Stevens wrapped, only reuniting publicly at a 2005 premiere, the Kim Possible alum wishes her onscreen little brother the best.

"I pray for Shia often," she told E!. "Whenever something comes out in the news that's positive, I'm rooting for him. And whenever something negative comes out in the news, my heart breaks. Society has a way of writing child actors off."

Andrew Toth/Getty Images/Dave Benett/WireImage

However, she did emphasize LaBeouf—who has faced several legal battles over the years, most recently pleading guilty to simple battery in June after a fight in New Orleans—is still responsible for his own actions.

"Some things—I will be very clear about—some things shouldn't be written off," Romano explained. "We can't infantilize the man. He's a grown-up. His actions, if they're illegal, deserve ramifications."

"He's gotten himself into his own messes," she continued, but added, "I just hope for the best for him. I truly do."

For more bombshells from Romano's new memoir Once Upon a Trainwreck: The Fall and Rise of a Child Star, keep reading.

Christy Carlson Romano's First Commercial Audition Included Question About Being Topless

Christy Carlson Romano was 6 when she went to her first audition, for a Zest soap commercial.

She recounts in her 2026 memoir Once Upon a Trainwreck that, after reading the lines, the casting director asked if Christy would be comfortable being filmed from the back with no shirt on, as the ad was set in a shower.

Mom Sharon Romano (also Christy's manager until she was 21) answered, "'I'm sure that's fine,'" Christy wrote, "even though I am not feeling fine about it at all. My whole body feels squirmy, like I want to run out of the room."

Christy didn't end up booking that commercial.

But the Kim Possible alum, who called her relationship with Sharon "complex" when she appeared on Special Forces in 2025, also refers to her mom multiple times in the book as her "ride or die."

"Despite everything, despite all our complicated history, family shows up," Christy wrote in one of the letters to her daughters that inform the structure of the book. "She always showed up."

Macaulay Culkin Mooed at Christy Carlson Romano in School

Christy writes of attending Professional Children’s School in Manhattan while Macaulay Culkin and younger brother Kieran Culkin were also students there. She remembers the Home Alone stars hanging out with a crowd of guys who wore "Black Flag and NOFX pins on their black trench coats, or those stupid pins that say 'Life Sucks, and Then You Die' on their silver-graffitied black bike messenger bags."

One day, she writes, Macaulay "started mooing at me on the stairwell like a cow and seemed super out of it one day, at least to me. In my head, I can only think that he’s such a waste of talent, and I feel embarrassed that he goes to our school looking like that."

Christy notes later in the book that, when she first met him at their brother-sister chemistry read, her Even Stevens costar Shia LaBeouf reminded her of the “'punk” PCS kids, Macaulay and Kieran."

E! News has reached out to Macaulay's rep for comment and has yet to hear back.

Scarlett Johansson Made Christy Carlson Romano Nervous

When established actress Scarlett Johansson enrolled at PCS, Christy writes, she didn't want to be caught looking at her too much "because she’s so cool and I don’t want to seem like I’m trying too hard."

They eventually started eating lunch together with some other girls, and Scarlett attended a sleepover at her house, but Christy felt "uneasy and insecure" around the Horse Whisperer star.

Buena Vista TV/Kobal/Shutterstock

Christy Carlson Romano Had No Bond With Shia LaBeouf Off-Camera

Despite being so believable playing a put-upon older sister and her obnoxious but good-hearted little brother on the Disney Channel's Even Stevens, Christy and Shia "rarely interact off-screen," she writes. "He barely asks about my life and I don't ask about his. Maybe it makes the sibling rivalry feel real on the show, but in actual, everyday life, it sucks."

Overall, Christy notes, she felt that the show's crew was "constantly trying to pit us against each other" so much that the tension between the Stevens siblings "bleeds over into real life."

Why Christy Carlson Romano Missed Auditioning for The Princess Diaries

Christy writes that Donna Pescow, who played her mom on Even Stevens, helped her run lines for her audition for "the perfect role" in The Princess Diaries, a film she envisioned being the one to break her out of TV and into movies.

But she was shooting 2003's The Even Stevens Movie at the time, and that day went long. She ended up missing her Princess Diaries audition, Christy recalls, and couldn't reschedule it.

How She Became Christy Carlson Romano

Born Christy Romano, that's the name the actress stuck with when she starred on Even Stevens and Kim Possible. It wasn't until she played Belle in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway in 2004 that she became Christy Carlson Romano, first seeing her new moniker on a billboard in Times Square.

She added her mom's maiden name to her moniker "for broader appeal" after Sharon worried that just Romano sounded "'too ethnic,'" Christy writes in Once Upon a Trainwreck. Upon seeing it, she recalls, "I’m embarrassed by how long it is. And there it is. Looming over Times Square. It’s not even my real name, but now I’m stuck with it."

Carley Margolis/FilmMagic

Depression Led Christy Carlson Romano to Try Self-Harming

Feeling lonely and adrift in the mid-'00s, Christy recalls being "depressed and starting to feel a little untethered."

"I’ve become so numb, I’ve tried being bulimic just to feel something," she writes, and she considers that drinking more and sleeping all day will also help her spend less money on food.

At another point, she continues, "I try scraping my nails against the insides of my arms to see if I can become a cutter. No such luck. I feel like a dumbass. How was I ever someone’s role model?"

Christy Carlson Romano Says She Tried Cocaine for the First Time at Paris Hilton's House

Christy writes that she saw cocaine for the first time during a Halloween party at Paris Hilton's house and—despite having sworn to herself to never do hard drugs—she says yes when the person who brought her to the party encourages her to try it.

"After getting a taste for it the first time at Paris’s party, I’ve been partying too much and trying coke more," she writes, noting that she also saw it as a useful way to get her boyfriend to worry more about her.

E! reached out to Hilton's rep for comment but has not yet heard back.

Pregnancy Prompted Christy Carlson Romano to Seek Help for Drinking Problem

Having been candid about her struggle with alcohol abuse, Christy writes in the book that it wasn't until she was pregnant with her and husband Brendan Rooney's first child in 2016 that she admitted she had a drinking problem.

She recalls telling their therapist during a counseling session, "I’m powerless over alcohol. And I need to stop.”

Instagram/Christy Carlson Romano

What Happened After Christy Carlson Romano Was Shot in the Face

Christy shared in February 2025 that she'd been shot in the eye by someone in their party who "unsafely fired in the wrong direction" while she was shooting clay pigeons with her husband in Texas.

In her book, she describes catching "bird shot fragment scatter because a shotgun was fired in my direction from two hundred feet away."

She writes that she feared in the moment that she was going to die, and that her husband assumed she would lose her sight in that eye.

Christy recalls asking with a laugh, "'AM I UGLY?!'" as she also sobbed.

Praising how calm her husband was driving her to the hospital with her "beloved shooter" in the backseat, Christy writes that she joked to the guy, "They say you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take."

The doctor told her it missed her eye by 1 millimeter, but, she writes, "The bird shot is still in my head. The scar is still on my face. And I’m grateful for both, because they remind me to stay present."

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