Shia LaBeouf 'Getting Through' Hand Injury

Action star Shia LaBeouf is just as tough off screen as he is on.
"I'm just propped up right now to do Transformers 2," LaBeouf told PEOPLE of his left hand at Tuesday's Eagle Eye premiere in Hollywood. "Then, when I get another surgery, I'll start recovering. Right now, I'm getting through."

It was his first red carpet appearance since the July 27 DUI citation and accident that crushed his hand. The 22-year-old kept the healing appendage, which was in a white protective guard, in his pocket for most of the night. And when asked if he was "70- to 80-percent back to normal," LaBeouf joked, "I haven't percentaged it out."

LaBeouf's hand injury, which left two of his fingers broken, forced a script rewrite of Transformers 2, which is currently in production. The changes are minor, according to one of the movie's writers.

"It will be a part of it," Alex Kurtzman, Transformers 2 co-writer and Eagle Eye producer, said. "Very little, actually, very little. Without giving too much away, it actually fit very organically into what we were already doing."

LaBeouf revealed to PEOPLE that it's the elaborate action sequences with explosions on Eagle Eye, Transformers 2, and Indiana Jones 4 where actors stand to get injured.

"You start pushing it a little bit. The scary thing about doing it so often is you take certain things for granted," he said. "You forget to put the elbow pad on, and you wind up wrecking your elbow … You become jaded. It's work to not become jaded."