This gives whole new meaning to the term "headshot."

Actor Shia LaBeouf is established, with an impressive resume and a familiar face, namely with turns in blockbusters like 'Transformers' and 'Indiana Jones.' So he doesn't really require much window dressing for directors, casting agents and producers in Hollywood. They don't need to see glossy pics or a sizzle reel.

But Danish director Lars Von Trier is not your ordinary moviemaker. Before casting LaBeouf in his film 'Nymphomaniac,' the director's team asked the actor to send a picture of his penis.

Wait, what?

Von Trier is using porn peeps to film real sex scenes and then recomposing the shots with the actors in the cast. That's probably why production requested a pic of the LaBeouf's penis. No, we're not making this up.

The actor, who plays Jerome in the film, revealed that the unusual and unorthodox request put his team of handlers in the grip of fear. LaBeouf recalls, "The first info we got -- and I'll never forget this because my entire team reacted with such a fear -- the first request on the production end, not from Lars, was pictures of my penis."

LaBeouf is, er, excited about the role, since he is used to being "the everyman or the normal guy stuck in this extraordinary situation." Here, he gets to be someone and something else.

"Jerome was the opportunity to play a slimy, evil, blasphemous, mini-juggernaut of a man," the actors says. "The way into the character is, you ask yourself, what about you is pugnacious, what about you is vain, and you just turn it all up, you just amplify all of it. So I became quite physical, it became like 'American Psycho.' It became that without the killing."

The cast includes Willem Dafoe, Christian Slater and Uma Thurman. It will land in the U.K. in two parts – on Feb. 21 and March 21.

Let's hope that those pictures don't end up in the wrong hands.

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