Shailene Woodley Reveals She Was ‘Very, Very Sick’ While Shooting the 'Divergent' Movies
04/12/2020Shailene Woodley revealed that her acting career almost ended, just when it was starting to take off.
While promoting her new movie Ending, Beginnings, the Big Little Lies star told The New York Times she battled with a life-threatening medical condition that nearly forced her to "let go" of her career while filming the Divergent movies.
"I haven’t spoken much about this yet publicly, and I will one day, but I was very, very sick in my early twenties," Shailene Woodley shared. "While I was doing the Divergent movies and working hard, I also was struggling with a deeply personal, very scary physical situation."
Woodley in Allegiant (2016)
Without going into specifics, Woodley revealed she was forced to take a step back from the spotlight. "Because of that, I said no to a lot of opportunities because I needed to get better, and those jobs ended up going to peers of mine who I love," she explained. "They went on to a lot of success, but there was a mix of people saying, 'You shouldn't have let that go!' or 'You shouldn't have been sick!'"
Though the 28-year-old didn’t elaborate on the details of her illness, she said it was unclear if she'd be able to continue working. “I was in a place where I had no choice but to just surrender and let go of my career, and it brought out this negative voice in my mind that kept spinning for years and years afterward," Woodley said, adding that outside factors were also adding to the destructive narrative.
"In my late teens, I had a strong idea of my identity and the meaning of my life, but then I went through an abusive relationship," she said. "That combined with, honestly, the commercial success I had in this industry began to wear on my strength."
The actor, who became a household name for The Secret Life of the American Teenager in 2008 and The Fault in Our Stars in 2012, starred as Tris in the 2014 dystopian film trilogy, Divergent, which also included Insurgent in 2015 and Allegiant in 2016. A fourth movie titled Ascendant was scheduled for a 2017 theatrical release but was canceled—allegedly for fiscal reasons.
Thankfully, Woodley told the publication that she has since fully recovered from her health scare and is in a better place now. "Now I'm on the other side of it, thank God," she said. "A lot of the last few years has been about focusing on mental health for me, and it's a slow process. But because of that work, I feel very grounded and rooted in who I am and very clear about everything in my life, whether it's my career or my relationships or my own internal worth."
Woodley added, "I feel very grateful to have walked that line of fire because now I know what I don't want to ever go back to."
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