Woodley joins a new class of stars
No damsel in distress for Shailene, star of “Divergent.” Interview,
BEVERLY HILLS More surprising than an immediate Shailene Woodley hug — which she passes out frequently, to all she meets — is the wiry strength behind it.
The Divergent star laughs at mention of it, but there’s a serious reason why Woodley, who grew to fame in The Descendants and The
Spectacular Now, has become strong enough to carry a tough, dystopian franchise. ( Divergent opens Friday).
For Woodley, 22, being physically capable — all the time — is paramount.
“I wore a brace for two years in high school for my spine,” she says. “And so, during those two years, I wasn’t strong, because I had to wear it 18 hours a day, and I didn’t have time to be physically active.
“After that, I remember feeling really weak, and that’s when I went to Hawaii to film The De
scendants. I went on a hike, and I remember the first two seconds, I was out of breath. And I was like, ‘I’m 18 years old, and I can’t hike this mountain, and this 50- year-old next to me is charging it! What is wrong with this picture?’ ”
The Los Angeles native is also mindful of how she lives and eats. Woodley doesn’t own a cellphone or a TV and eats organically and locally. She normally collects her own spring water (“On Divergent, we were in Chicago, and there wasn’t really a good spring source nearby that I had access to”) and cooked all her own meals on set.
Woodley carried her lifestyle onto the Pittsburgh shoot of the upcoming drama The Fault
in Our Stars, in which she plays cancer patient Hazel Lancaster (and for which she chopped off her long locks).
“She bought all her food locally,” says Fault director Josh Boone. “We only went to restaurants with her (with food sourced) from local farms. We got on the Shailene Woodley train.”
But losing the muscle mass for the film was discomforting, says Woodley, who takes an hour-long meditative walk every day. “After
Fault, I felt really weak, and I was again in this position where I didn’t feel like I could physically stand up for myself if something were to happen. And that’s when I started being active again.”