Shailene Woodley Almost Quit Acting before “Big Little Lies”

Shailene Woodley at the
Shailene Woodley at the "Adrift" film premiere in 2018. Photo by Chelsea Lauren/Variety/REX/Shutterstock (9691511ah)

Although she is one of the most talented actresses of her generation, Shailene Woodley was thinking about retiring from acting not that long ago. In a recent interview with Porter Edit, the 26-year-old said that she thought about doing something else after filming the third installment of The Divergent Series, Allegiant, in 2016.

“There was a point in my life, right before Big Little Lies, where I had hit a wall with acting,” Woodley told Porter Edit. “I felt it was time to do something different. I called my agents and said, ‘Please don’t send me any more scripts; I need to explore other avenues.’ They respected me and didn’t send me anything for almost a year until Big Little Lies. I didn’t know what it was or who was involved, I just said, ‘Thanks, I’m still not interested.'”

Still, her agent insisted that she just takes a look at the script. “I read it, fell in love with it, and Laura, who I had worked with on The Fault in Our Stars, called me and that was really the push,” she explained.

Shailene Woodley started her acting career when she was only 10 years old, having minor roles in several television films and series. In 2008 she landed the lead role on ABC Family’s teen drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which ran for five seasons and was the channel’s most-watched program. She made her feature film debut in 2011, starring alongside George Clooney in The Descendants, and later went on to star in movies like The Spectacular Now, Divergent, and The Fault in Our Stars.

Her most recent projects include season two of HBO’s Big Little Lies, and 2018 movie Adrift.