'Indiana Jones 4' Q&A: Shia LaBeouf

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was the mood like on the Crystal Skull set with you, Harrison, John Hurt, and Ray Winstone?
SHIA LABEOUF: It was like a fraternity, a boys club. Dirty jokes and a lotta man s---. Jokes you couldn't really repeat out loud, that you'd never want to tell around your wife. Harrison has a very dry sense of humor. And what's amazing is Karen [Allen] was in the boys club with us. She got to ride the ride with us. It was never batting the eyelashes or pulling any of that s---. She's one of the guys. She was my first friend on set. [Click to see our Q&A with Karen Allen]

Crystal Skull actually has a lot of humor in it.
There's a lot of play and a lot of freedom with the comedy. It's the most humorous one out of the bunch so far. I haven't seen the cut, I just know from shooting.

But when it comes to Cate Blanchett as a villain? Probably no comedy there.
I worked with her for four months and I still don't think I've ever met Cate Blanchett. She's that good. She is elusive. Cate held on to a kind of exclusion. Maybe not necessarily [intentionally], but we all played into it. She definitely wasn't in the tight-knit ''fabulous five'' [of LaBeouf, Ford, Hurt, Winstone, and Allen] that we built. She was kind of in her own world, which works perfectly for the movie. She probably did do it on purpose. If it was an accident, it was divine. She's incredible to watch, as a technician. She's purebred badass in the movie. She's scary.

You shot some scenes in and around Yale University. Weren't you thinking of going there?
I had a letter of intent. I was planning on going to Yale to theater school. And then when I got there [for our location shoot], it all went away. I just felt as though I would never attend school there. It's not an enjoyable place. I didn't like New Haven. It's a beautiful campus, but that's all that it is.

Did you actually go to the admission office or anything?
I don't know if I'd ever be accepted into that school. But being there with Indiana Jones, you almost want to call up all the administration and say, ''Listen, why don't you meet me down on set? Maybe I can do, like, an in-person letter of recommendation. Maybe your administration can come down and say hello to Steven, and maybe he can give you the one-two punch, and maybe I can get into this school.'' But that never came about. The way I felt was: What theater school's gonna allow me to work with Cate Blanchett? Or Harrison Ford and Ray Winstone and John Hurt and Steven Spielberg? What school in the world would actually allow me to do these things, and not just study but be in the middle of the cage with them? The decision is sort of made right there. When you're working with the best of the best, I'm not gonna put that on hold so I can work with people who studied the best of the best.