Shailene Diann Woodley born November 15, [ 1 ] is an American actress. She then starred in the films The Descendants and The Spectacular Now , receiving a nomination for her first Golden Globe Award for the former. Woodley achieved wider recognition for her starring role as a teenaged cancer patient in the romantic drama The Fault in Our Stars and as Beatrice Prior in the science-fiction trilogy The Divergent Series β Woodley is also an environmental activist.
She is a Greenpeace Oceans Ambassador and has helped the organization lobby for certain environmental policy proposals, notably the High Seas Treaty and the Global Plastic Pollution Treaty. She also serves as a board member of the political action committee , Our Revolution and a co-founder of the nonprofit organization All it Takes, which focuses on youth development.
Woodley grew up in Simi Valley, California. Both of her parents are psychologists. Shailene has a younger brother, Tanner. She told The Hollywood Reporter that her parents only agreed to allow her to work professionally if she promised to adhere to three rules: "I had to stay the person they knew I was; have fun; and do good in school".
Woodley was a 4. In order to graduate with her class while starring in an ABC Family TV show, which she booked in the middle of her junior year , a teacher would go to her house once a week and bring all the work she missed at school, which she would do at home or in her trailer on set, in-between takes. Two days into the new job, she got a call to meet with director Alexander Payne and after two months, she had to quit the job after joining the film The Descendants.
At fifteen, she was diagnosed with scoliosis and was put in a chest-to-hips plastic brace for two years. Woodley told Us Weekly that "It's like wearing a tacky, disgusting, plastic corset for 18 hours a day. In the beginning, it was hard to eat or breathe. And I had to give up cross-country running. But I needed to have it to realign my spine". Woodley began her acting career in with a minor role in the television film Replacing Dad. She went on to feature in minor television roles in The District and Crossing Jordan in the latter, she portrayed the year-old version of Jill Hennessy 's title character.
