Shailene Woodley reveals the health struggles she went through early in her Hollywood career.
Shailene Woodley landed an acclaimed role in The Descendants, opposite George Clooney, to turn heads across Hollywood. But the movie that put it on the map globally was Divergent, in 2014. The problem is that in those years there wasn't much else to see away from that franchise.
That the first stretch of Woodley's career wasn't more hectic has nothing to do with a lack of opportunity. As revealed by the actress this week in an interview with The New York Times, the truth is that everything has more to do with health reasons that slowed down Woodley's rise to Hollywood Olympus. And it is a section in which she could have established herself as one of the most relevant young actresses of her generation.
"In my late teens, I had a strong idea of my identity and the meaning of life, but then I went through an abusive relationship. That, combined with, to be honest, the commercial success I've had in this industry, started to damage my strength," says Woodley in his interview with journalist Kyle Buchanan. "As a 20-something, I felt like I was in a washing machine and getting hit everywhere."
The Big Little Lies actress says that during her teenage years she always saw acting as a hobby and never wanted the idea of turning that hobby into a career to dampen her passion for the craft: "But as a twenty-something, there was a huge block of a time when anxiety and fear and competitiveness were definitely on my mind and my ego in a way that they weren't when I was young."
"I haven't talked much about this publicly, and I will one day, but I was very, very sick in my early 20s," adds Ella Woodley. "When I was making the Divergent movies and working hard, I was also struggling with a deeply personal and frightening physical situation. So, I turned down a lot of opportunities because I needed to find myself better. And those roles ended up going to colleagues of mine which I love. They became very successful, but there was a group of people who told me, 'You shouldn't have let that go!' or 'You shouldn't have been sick!'"
Woodley claims that she tried to see what solution to find to the problem, but that she ultimately decided to give up and let her career slip away. At least for a while. Now, Woodley says that she is already "on the other side" of the problem and that she has been focusing on her mental health for years: "I feel very grateful that I walked that line of fire because now I know that I never want to go back to it again."
