Shia LaBeouf gets serious beard envy at the Cannes Film Festival

With presumably no more Transformers movies for a couple of years, Shia LaBeouf is trying to branch out and get audiences to take him more seriously. If that's the case Shia, grow a better beard.

Having spent years being chased by giant robots at the behest of Michael Bay, all the while shouting "No! No! No! No!", it's unsurprising to see that Shia LaBeouf wants to change his image a little.

Having already self-published an incredibly awful comic book which he drew himself, the former Disney Channel star has figured out a new way to show just how grown-up he's gotten - he's grown a beard.

Unfortunately, his co-stars for the upcoming Prohibition-era drama Lawless - including manly icon Tom Hardy - had the same idea.

No wonder Shia looks so unhappy...

In the film itself - which received a mixed reception at the festival - Shia and Hardy play two brothers who run a small-scale moonshining family business. They later find their bootlegging business under threat in Prohibition-era Franklin County, Virginia with a shady deputy (Guy Pearce) and a gangster leader (Gary Oldman) causing them no end of troubles.

Yet in the case of Shia, he carefully groomed beard was no match to that of his castmates, with Hardy in particular outshining the young actor with a beard so bristly it would make even a sea captain swoon.

A shot beside the beard-less Jessica Chastain appears to have cheered him up though

Our advice to Shia would be to choose everything about his look a lot more carefully if he plans to show up at future Lawless premieres.

Tom Hardy rarely puts a foot wrong (aside from This is War, anyway) when it comes to endearing himself to his male and female followings and as such, don't act surprised when he steals your thunder on the red carpet.

On the plus side, the film isn't released until late August so Shia has nearly three months to catch up with Hardy powerful facial hair, though we reckon this race is already over.