Actor Shia LaBeouf claims to have "found God" during the making of his latest film, Second World War epic Fury.

Known as much for his off-screen bad-boy persona as much as for his on-screen charisma in films like the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, former Disney child star LaBeouf says that he was influenced by co-star Brad Pitt and director David Ayer in his spiritual awakening.

He told Interview magazine: "I found God doing Fury. I became a Christian man ... in a very real way. I could have just said the prayers that were on the page. But it was a real thing that really saved me.

"I had good people around me who helped me. [Brad Pitt] was really instrumental in guiding my head through this. Brad comes from a hyper-religious, very deeply Christian, Bible Belt life, and he rejected it and moved toward an unnamed spirituality. Whereas [David Ayer] is a full subscriber to Christianity. But these two diametrically opposed positions both lead to the same spot, and I really looked up to both men."

LaBeouf, 28, has a Jewish mother and Pentecostal father, who are divorced. He has previously identified himself as Jewish, writing in I am Jewish, compiled in honour of slain journalist Daniel Pearl: "I am what you would call a claimer Jew. See, I claim to be Jewish because it is beneficial to be Jewish ... How? I have a personal relationship with God that happens to work within the confines of Judaism ... Really, I feel cocky when I say I am Jewish, not bad cocky, but good cocky. Because what I am really saying is that I am one of the few chosen ones out there. I made it; God chose me and I take pride in that.^"

He has also said: "Religion is funny. If it gives people hope, it makes sense. But it never made sense to me."

In Fury, LaBeouf plays a Christian soldier whose faith helps him to cope with the shocking violence he sees all around him, while Pitt – in real life a pacifist – plays a tank commander who believes that violence is necessary and takes to it with relish.

His own life has seen plenty of drama. He was fired from a Broadway play and briefly imprisoned after spitting at a policeman, and has been treated for drug and alcohol abuse.