Christy Carlson Romano Couldn’t Watch ‘Even Stevens’ Costar Shia LaBeouf’s Films: ‘I Was Salty’

Christy Carlson Romano and Shia LaBeouf played such a believable brother and sister on Even Stevens, but the former Disney Channel star said that for a while, she “couldn’t bring myself to watch” his films once he became a movie superstar as an adult.

“We went from seeing each other every day to not seeing each other for years to him being this huge star. For a while, I think the ghost of who Shia was and who he became was really frustrating for me. I didn’t watch any of his movies. I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to watch them,” the 37-year-old confessed in an August 24 YouTube video.

“I was a bit salty. I felt like he had gotten a better agent, a better manager. So, I felt kind of jilted by the whole situation,” she explained. “I felt like, here he is making a big splash in Hollywood and here I am. I chose to go to college. …There was definitely an undercurrent of regret but also an undercurrent of comparison. Sibling rivalry, if you will,” Christy explained, then added, I think over time that mellowed out for me.”

“To be honest, I don’t know if we were ever really friends. But we were coworkers. and we had really good onscreen chemistry. People assumed that we were in real life, brother and sister. And in real life, I had an influence over what this guy did,” Christy admitted about the 35-year-old Transformers star.

The Broadway actress was disappointed when in 2003, Shia won a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Young Artist for his work on Even Stevens and didn’t thank her in his acceptance speech.

“I always wanted him to really appreciate what I gave to him, and something that really hurt my feelings was when he won his Emmy award, and he was on the podium, and I was sitting there with the rest of our team. He thanked everybody at the table, but he didn’t thank me. I was hurt at the time because it was like him and me, it was our show,” Christy recalled.

As for when fans ask her today if she’s still in touch with Shia, Christy revealed, “I’m honored that people would think that I would still be in touch with him, because it means we did a really good job making you guys think we were real life brother and sister. But in reality, it just wasn’t like that. We weren’t really close.”