Will it be Indy films for Shia?

Shia LaBeouf is in the place where so many former child actors have found themselves: that murky area between boyhood and manhood, between cute and commanding.

And he’s impatient for it to be over.

“I want to get bigger. I’m sick of being a boy,” the lanky actor says of his recent regimen of running and working out.

“I know that there’s this innocence that I have, but I feel like I’ve played that guy. The whole goal for me has been diversity and diversifying your portfolio and making sure you do a whole bunch of different things and you don’t get typecast. If I become a type, my career is over.

“I want to be an intimidating presence. I want to be a … killer.”

Strong words from the former star of the Disney Channel series “Even Stevens,” which earned him a Daytime Emmy in 2003.

Since then, though, LaBeouf has put together an eclectic filmography for a 20-year-old.

He’s appeared opposite Will Smith (“I, Robot”) and Keanu Reeves (“Constantine”). He’s played a wrongly accused juvenile prisoner (“Holes”), a drugged-out campaign worker (“Bobby”) and a would-be thug (“A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints”).

This year alone he’s starring in the thriller “Disturbia,” a high-tech teen update of “Rear Window”; the big-screen version of “Transformers”; and the animated “Surf’s Up,” in which he provides the voice of a surfing penguin.

And then there are those persistent Internet rumors that he’s signed on to play Indiana Jones Jr. in the fourth installment of Steven Spielberg‘s film franchise.

“I don’t have a deal on the table, it’s just a rumor,” he insists.

“Would I do it? In a second. It’d be working for a legend and working with legends. Who wouldn’t?

“But is it something I’m doing right now? No. I’m an out-of-work actor.”

LaBeouf hasn’t been out of work much since he flipped through the Yellow Pages looking for an agent as a 10-year-old; he was cast as the precocious Lewis Stevens that year.

“I grew up on that show, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me,” he says.

“My dad was on drugs – heroin and all kinds of wild (stuff) – and he was in a rehab facility. My mom was trying to hold down the fort, and that wasn’t working. So when the show came along it was a savior. It saved my life, my family’s life.”

LaBeouf’s parents eventually divorced; as an only child, he remains close to both. His father, he says, was a mime and a clown who used to grow pot in the brush along the sides of L.A.’s freeways; his mother was a dancer.

“I feel like my childhood was kind of lost. It was adulthood right away,” he says, turning over his right arm to reveal a tattoo on the inside of his wrist that reads “1986-2004” – the period from his birth until he turned 18.

“I feel like you forget a lot of your childhood so I put the timeline on my wrist,” he explains.

“I just don’t want to forget the childhood I did have.”

The birthday bunch

Actor Patrick McGoohan is 79. Actress Phyllis Newman is 74. Actress Ursula Andress is 71. Actress Glenn Close is 60. Actor Bruce Willis is 52. Actor Craig Lamar Traylor (“Malcolm in the Middle”) is 18.