Mocked at school for being skinny and falling into acting by accident, Hollywood’ s newest uncut diamond is a hard act to pin down. Khashiya Adegbite casts the runes over an oddball star on the rise
SHAILENE W
12
For someone who wanted to marry Anais Nin, and yet turned down the role of Anastasia Steele in Fifty Shades of Grey, Shailene Diann Woodley wears conundrum’ s cloak lightly. After all, she cites the Delta of Venus author as one of the writers who changed her life. The other was George Orwell.
So far, so bookworm. As she says, she likes nothing better after a long day on-set, than to curl up with a good book. Like Orwell’ s 1984, or Nin’ s Henry and June( which chronicled Nin’ s three-way love affair with Henry Miller and his wife).
Nin’ s 1930s affair with the author was recorded in graphic detail in her Unexpurgated Diary which revealed a woman breaking out into wild sexual discovery. And in 1990, it was a filmed as Henry and June by Philip Kaufman, starring Uma Thurman, Fred Ward and Maria de Madeiros, with Kevin Spacey in a supporting role.
Notoriously, it was the first movie to be released in the United States with an NC-17 rating, a higher category than X, to signify more graphic sexual content.
Nin’ s original diary didn’ t make it into print until 1986 as Henry and June: From A Journal of Love: the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin( 1931 – 1932). Apart from her tormented pursuit of June Miller, Nin ultimately inspired Henry Miller to publish his groundbreaking pornographic novel Tropic of Cancer.
Anais Nin would later achieve fame in her own right, with her Delta of Venus in which she conjures up a glittering cascade of sexual encounters. Creating her own“ language of the senses”, she explores in vibrant prose the essence of female sexuality, winning acclaim as one of the finest writers of female erotica.
Such was the author who inspired Shailene Woodley. And these days back at the studio, things are bubbling along just as nicely. The nature-loving leading lady of Allegiant, the third in the Divergent series, now in cinemas, first made an impact with her TV role as Amy Juergens in The Secret Life of an American Teenager( 2008-2013).
That was followed by her big-screen breakthrough opposite George Clooney in The Descendants( 2011). Her role as Clooney’ s troubled elder daughter brought critical acclaim.
Mocked at school for being skinny and falling into acting by accident, Hollywood’ s newest uncut diamond is a hard act to pin down. Khashiya Adegbite casts the runes over an oddball star on the rise
The New York Times said:“ Ms. Woodley..[ gives ].. one of the toughest, smartest, most credible adolescent performances in recent memory”. And Variety described her performance a“ revelation”.
Rolling Stone euthologised:“ A sublime actress with a resume that pretty much proves she’ s incapable of making a false move on camera,” wrote critic Peter Travers. The film was topical because of the popularity of John Green’ s novel and boosted Shailene’ s profile, making $ 48,002,523 in its opening weekend( June 2014).
But Woodley doesn’ t let such numbers turn her head.“ I fell into this business by accident,” she says.“ It’ s evolved into an insane passion, a creative outlet. Nothing more. The day it becomes a job, a career, I will quit.”
Shailene Diann Woodley was born on 15th November 1991 in SIMI Valley, California where her father was a middle school counsellor and her mum a school principal. She has one brother Tanner, and began modelling when she was four years old.
Acting roles followed and she made her screen debut in the TV series Replacing Dad in 1999. Her parents were very supportive of her striking out for fame – on three conditions: she had to have fun, stay the person she was, and do well at local high school.
She took their advice and fell in love with books on the way. And she even had a private tuition at home when she was away from school on-set filming The Secret Life of an American Teenager( 2008).
She was just 15, when illness struck. She was diagnosed with scoiliosis, a twisting of the growing spinal column.
She was forced to wear a chest-to-hips plastic body frame, and during her partial immobility was able to further indulge her love of reading.
While still at high school, she became a nature lover after reading about the environment and US corporations’ control of the food chain.“ I was on a quest to find out what healthy really meant,” she recalls.“ People were saying veganism was healthy or that the Paleo diet was healthy, but I really had no idea. I started researching indigenous people and their lifestyles, and was fascinated they could still run in their eighties, still had amazing muscular and nervous systems.
“ So I just started adjusting my lifestyle. I realised we’ re all indigenous creatures on this planet. We’ re not different from nature- we are part of the Earth, so it all starts with us. If we want to save the planet we need to think about saving ourselves.”
As Woodley told Flaunt Magazine:‘” I gather my own spring water from mountains, I go to a farm to get my food, I make everything from my own.”
And that singular focus includes knowing her own mind. Asked by a showbiz hack about the comparisons between her raw talent and that of Hunger Games franchise starlet Jennifer Lawrence, she didn’ t miss a beat with her reply.
“ She’ s everyone’ s favourite person to compare me to. Is it because we both have short hair and a vagina? I see us as separate individuals”. And she added about her youthful insecurities:“ My whole life I’ ve been self-conscious about being skinny. Now I don’ t care any more. All insecurities are projected, what you think others are saying. But they don’ t really matter at all.”
The year 2014 was when the 24-yearold really hit stardom with The Fault in Our Stars which was released in the same year as the Divergent series. Her roles in both were widely different, but she handled them with consummate skill.
In the Divergent series her character Tris is an all-action heroine. But in The Fault in our Stars she showed her versatility, playing a vulnerable girl so convincingly, that it instantly won the sympathy of audiences. And she’ s uncompromisingly plain speaking to reporters. When asked if she could track down her favourite author and