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Evan Rachel Wood on Her Sundance Movie With Shia LeBeouf, Who Doesn’t Karaoke

Actress Evan Rachel Wood attends
Evan Rachel Wood. Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

In The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, Evan Rachel Wood plays a Romanian cellist who finds herself in a painful love triangle with suitors played by Shia LaBeouf (the earnest one) and Mads Mikkelsen (the nefarious one). “I think that’s one of the reasons Shia and I both took the movie — we’ve both loved very deeply and both been hurt very deeply,” Wood told us at the Sundance premiere party hosted by Nur Kahn at pop-up Park City’s Main Street. The two have been trying to connect on a film for a while, she said. “We’ve been in the same circles since we were kids. I met him for the first time when I was, like, 13 at the MTV Movie Awards or something. We hung out afterward, and we’d always see each other and say hi. And then we tried to get into each other’s movies, and tried to get movies made, and it didn’t work.” Countryman changed all that — and gave the old pals a chance to log some quality karaoke time in Bucharest, where the film was shot. “Shia did not karaoke,” said Wood. (Her song is “Piece of My Heart.”) “He watched. The Romanians are serious about their karaoke. You do not get up if you cannot, like, do it. They are very, very serious. I just don’t think that’s his thing.”

Sundance is also where Wood met her husband, Jamie Bell, with whom she’s expecting her first child later this year. “We actually met when we were 17, at a party similar to this,” she said. “It was this weird karmic thing where we just knew something was going to happen. We fell in love that night, and we’ve been in love ever since.” She doesn’t have a name picked out for the baby yet, but “I have a weird feeling it’s a boy,” she told us. Although she’ll have three more movies out this year (Barefoot, A Case of You, and 10 Things I Hate About Life), she is planning a break. “I had a bunch of movies lined up and had to call and go, ‘Hey … ’” she said. “But it’s worth it, and they all understood. There’s nothing I can do. I’m going to be pregnant for the rest of the year. That’s my new role.”

Evan Rachel Wood Says Shia Doesn’t Sing Karaoke