I'd like to be like a hummingbird. You see them every now and then. You don't see them everywhere.
Shailene Woodley
I think the most important thing in life is self-love, because if you don't have self-love, and respect for everything about your own body, your own soul, your own capsule, then how can you have an authentic relationship with anyone else?
Every single journey that I've embarked on, I've learned something new.
I would like to do something dark or small. I love independent films. I love emotional scenes. I love people who are struggling with something. I think it's just the juxtaposition to my incredibly happy, positive demeanor.
I was always the frugal kid growing up because I was saving for college. Or I was always that kid that was like, 'I'm going to save my babysitting money so I can eat an expensive dinner when I go to Europe.'
I'm always like 'I'm too skinny, I can't gain weight, even when I try.' I'd like to try to not let that get to me.
I'm already the most fortunate girl in the world, so I have zero expectations for what the future will bring.
I think there is a point in every teenager's life where they are forced to come into themselves.
When I started acting, my parents gave me three rules: I had to stay good in school, stay the kid they always knew I was, and I had to have fun. If I wasn't doing those three things, then I couldn't do acting anymore.
When it comes down to it, I'm just a girl who wears those five-finger weird toe shoes.
I think you get the most honest performances when an actor shows up to set with their lines memorized. That's a very important thing that a lot of people seem to forget. You have a pre-conceived notion of what you want the scene to be, but once you get there, that goes out the window and it turns out to be a way that you never imagined.
Alcohol is a big part of high school. I went through my little phase. I don't know one high schooler that doesn't.
There aren't a lot of films about adolescents or quote-unquote coming-of-age films that are realistic nowadays.
When I read a script or I see a character, I don't necessarily see the arc of her, that by the end she is this person, she's different from she was in the beginning. I guess it's more a subconscious understanding of that arc.
Every family is dysfunctional, whether you want to admit it or not.
I went to public school my whole life, graduated high school with my class. Growing up, I'd go to an audition, my friends would go to soccer practice and we'd all reconvene and hang out in our neighborhood. When I would book something, I would never tell my friends. Acting was just fun. I was a kid, I wasn't jaded.
You forget that you do choose your life and there are so many things to be grateful for and I feel like society has gotten to that point where we're always looking for the next and the better and we lose sight of what's actually in front of us.
A quarter of my life has been spent on 'Secret Life.' I'm 20 and I've been doing it for five years, so I think the best moments have been when all the cast members get to work together and we get to collaborate and share experiences. We all grew up together.
Acting is fun and I refuse to get involved in the semantics and the politics of strategy and breaking out of something or doing something because you need to do something else. For me it's all about what fuels my soul and if I'm passionate about a screenplay then that's what I'll do next.
There's been times when I've had heartbreaking moments and I'm like, 'I can't believe you said that,' or 'I can't believe you did that'. And it hurts, it still hurts, and it'll always hurt, but I've never had somebody that I truly cared about just walk out on me, whether it was a boyfriend, or an aunt, mom or dad.
George Clooney is a super-human, he's just such an amazing human being, he taught me how to be a better person and a better actor!
So often, I read scripts and am like, 'This would never happen in real life. It's not trying to be funny. It's trying to be serious.'
I love arguing. I always say that I'll never win a physical battle, but I can always win a mental battle. I mean, not really, because I never really argue with anyone.
George Clooney sort of lost his 'George Clooney-ness' the first day I met him. He's not George Clooney in my eyes - he's George from Kentucky with an awesome, awesome heart.
For me, my rule in this industry is I've got to listen to my butterflies. So if I got butterflies, then those are the scripts I go after.
I feel like a turtleneck dress that's long-sleeved and covers your entire body but is tight fitting is so much sexier than boobs spilling out, you know? So I guess I'm more into being classy sexy versus apparent sexy.
I like to think of myself as a fairly educated human being, but I'm a very uneducated actor when it comes to movies, directors, producers, actors for that matter.
I think every teenager goes through their angst. People who are like, 'No, I had a perfect adolescence,' make me wonder how that is possible.
My favorite movies are movies that I go in and I leave deeply affected. Whether I laugh really hard or whether I cry really hard, I just want to feel really affected in that moment.
Everyone today is like, 'Shailene, you're getting so much buzz. How does the feel?' It's the most odd question because it's like asking a kid who got into Cornell how it feels to be the top of your class at one of the Ivy League schools. How do you answer that? You just go, 'I don't know.'
For me acting is a passion and an art, and always will only be that. I don't have any rules when it comes to acting. I'll do anything. But it depends on the script. Either I'll have passion for the project or I won't. It's got to fuel me.
For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas.
I had never been to Hawaii, and now I say that my body is from L.A. but my heart is from Hawaii, because I'm in love with it and it's home on every level, from a spiritual, soulful place.
To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.
I really respond to human scripts, scripts that are raw and real and risky. I love playing scary characters - not horror film scary, but vulnerable scary.
I would love to act for the rest of my life, but I also know that it could be taken away in a day. It's something I've always loved, but it's nothing I've ever revolved my entire life around. I have many other passions as well.
I think there's a lot of work to be done with our societies. My biggest passions are the environment and health. And when I say 'health' I mean the secrets behind health and our food system.
I'm not really fond of the trails left in the sky and a lot of chemicals that are being pumped through factories and even in the clothes we wear.
