Shailene Woodley Reveals She Almost Quit Acting Before Starring in Big Little Lies
June 1, 2018Shailene Woodley almost didn’t star in HBO’s hit show Big Little Lies.
The star, 26, opened up about why she came close to turning her back on acting after filming 2016’s Allegiant.
“There was a point in my life, right before Big Little Lies, where I had hit a wall with acting,” she 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,” Woodley said. “I didn’t know what it was or who was involved, I just said, ‘Thanks, I’m still not interested.'”
Her refusal to read the script might have ended things before they began, but her agents insisted she read it before she said no, telling her Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern were involved.
Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley and Reese Witherspoon on Big Little Lies
Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Courtesy HBO
“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 said.
Shailene Woodley
Slaven Vlasic/Getty
While Woodley says she “wouldn’t change” the Divergent series “for the world,” she reveals filming the last one “was a bit of a hard experience for everyone, and that was really what made me think I need to have some human experiences outside of this industry and fall in love with acting again, and Big Little Lies did that for me.”
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The actress is now promoting her new film Adrift alongside her costar, Sam Claflin. She also isn’t ruling out any other alternative paths to acting and teases that she might be interested in pursuing politics one day.
“I don’t think I’ll be running in 2020, but it’s never something I would rule out,” Woodley said.