LaBeouf's paper-bag art stunt draws curious crowd

Despite the paper bag covering his noggin declaring "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE", Shia LaBeouf can still draw a crowd.

A line of more than 200 curious individuals seeking a few minutes of face time - or should that be bag time? - with the masked 27-year-old actor snaked along the sidewalk of a busy Los Angeles street, around the block and down an alleyway. A silent LaBeouf was brazenly on display for a performance-art piece titled #IAMSORRY.

"I read he's only doing it a few days, and I just wanted to be part of it," says Amanda Sutton, a 25-year-old graphic designer, as she waited outside the Cohen Gallery on trendy Beverly Boulevard for her staring contest with LaBeouf. "I don't know what's going to happen, other than what I read on Twitter. I keep thinking of what I'll say or do, but I just want it to be spontaneous."

Seated at a small table, wearing a disheveled tuxedo and a rumpled paper bag with eye holes cut out and the words "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE" scrawled in black ink across it, LaBeouf began his planned seven-day stint inside the small gallery. "Shia LaBeouf is sorry," read a news release circulated about the event. "Sincerely sorry."

So why exactly is LaBeouf apologetic? It's never explained, and LaBeouf isn't talking.

The performance-art oddity comes days after LaBeouf posed on the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival in the same getup and walked out of a news conference to promote filmmaker Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac Volume I, the first installment of a sexually charged two-part drama, after reciting a line once delivered by suspended French soccer player Eric Cantona: "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."

The Transformers and Disturbia star came under fire last year for borrowing the storyline and dialogue for his short film Howard Cantour.com, which closely resembled the 2007 graphic novel The Death-Ray by Daniel Clowes. LaBeouf has since apologized on Twitter in a series of posts that appear to be directly lifted from other famous mea culpas.