Toronto 2011: Shailene Woodley how She Ended Up Starring Opposite George Clooney in 'The Descendants' (Video)

Each honours season, it appears, I interview a youthful, little-known actress who's about the edge of full-fledged fame -- only, at that time we speak, she doesn't define it yet. We usually connect throughout or right after the Toronto Worldwide Film Festival, where "theInch will get a sneak peak in the good movies that everyone is only going to see a couple of days or several weeks down the road, after which she's as happy to talk with me like me to talk with her... then a few several weeks pass before I see her again, throughout which period the film is launched and everybody else sees what individuals people about the festival circuit saw... after which, next time we mix pathways about the honours trail, she's little if any recollection people ever getting spoken to begin with, since it is blurred in her own memory using the 100s of other interviews that they continues to be nudged to complete included in the honours "campaign" that's been installed on her account. TELLURIDE REVIEW: The Descendents When I think back, there is Junebug (2005) and Can Be The Demon Wears Prada (2006) and Emily Blunt Juno (2007) and Ellen Page Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and Sally Hawkins Instruction (2009) and Carey Mulligan and Winter's Bone (2010) and Jennifer Lawrence. This season, there's The Descendants and Shailene Woodley -- or, because the sexy, spunky 19-year-old introduces herself in my experience before our interview a couple of days ago, just "Shai." (I'll tell you if that changes to "Ms. Woodley" within the next couple of several weeks... my stomach feeling, though, is this fact particular youthful lady won't be transformed for that worse -- or much whatsoever -- in what's available on her.) Woodley, it works out, comes from Simi Valley, California, only a half-hour from Hollywood, where her father is really a school principal and her mother is really a guidance counselor. She began taking acting classes at age five, and shortly after a real estate agent known as her mother and expressed a desire for representing her. Her parents, she states, only decided to allow her to operate appropriately if she guaranteed to stick to three rules: "I needed to [1] stay the individual they understood I had been [2] have some fun and [3] do good in class.Inch She did, and hasn't looked back since. THR'S Complete Toronto 2011 Coverage She began out doing a large number of advertisements then co-starring roles on television shows then guest-starring roles on television shows then major roles in small movie-of-the-week type Television shows after which -- in the center of her junior year in senior high school (which she wound up graduation together with her class) -- reserved the starring role in ABC Family's "teenage cleaning soap opera" The Key Existence from the American Teen, that has been her greatest showcase up to now. (I am sorry to her because of not being more acquainted with it, but she laughingly reassures me, "You aren't the best demographic, so don't even be worried about that!"). "It's been this ladder which i've been climbing up," she states, "and that i'm still climbing!" Woodley's ultimate goal happens to be to get involved with film, and she or he finally got that chance to do this -- in certain pretty elite company -- when Oscar champion Alexander Payne cast her as Alexandra, the edgy daughter of the lady inside a coma (Patricia Hastie) and also the husband she'd been cheating on (George Clooney), within the Descendants, Fox Searchlight's large Oscar hopeful this season. Woodley fell deeply in love with Payne and Nat Faxon's script the very first time she see clearly -- "[I] immediately grew to become so fascinated by using it, so enthusiastic about it. I loved how human it had been, and just how raw it had been, and just how it didn't hide the untidy shit that continues in everyday existence, 'cause a lot of Hollywood films do." -- but really obtaining the part was not easy. The Key Existence wouldn't offer her time off work to audition when Payne was seeing youthful stars in La she is at Toronto when she learned he was seeing other women in NY, so she travelled lower during the day, experienced the "standard who audition process," and apparently designed a strong impression. ("I don't recall the audition," she states, "that we take like a positive thing.") The following factor she understood, she'd been cast, and everything went pretty quickly next: a table read across from Clooney per month in Hawaii before shooting commenced ("to find the vibe... since it's quite different from elsewhere") rehearsals after which three several weeks of production, which she takes note of like a magical time. PHOTOS: Toronto Film Festival: 13 Films to understand Woodley has four really important moments within the film (spoiler alert): when she's relayed through her father that her mother will die while she's in the household's pool when she informs her father that her mother have been cheating on him so when she defends her father to her mother's father in her own mother's hospital room. (She shares her reminiscences of all of them at the end of the publish.) Through the entire film, though, she provides a raw, real, convincing portrait of the teen in crisis (for an ever greater degree than normal). After I request what she came upon to do this -- stuff that she'd read, stuff that she'd experienced, etc. -- she was adamant, "There is no research there is no hooking up her to my very own personal existence. It had been just being contained in as soon as.Inch Quickly following the Descendants opened in the Telluride Film Festival two days ago, people began honoring the film and recommending that does not only Clooney but additionally Woodley might find yourself with Oscar nominations (the first kind for the best actor, the second for the best supporting actress). Woodley states that they treasured the chance simply to attend that festival and find out films with individuals who truly love them for the private acclaim that they has brought, she states that they is simply taking everything in stride, "daily, with gratitude." She continues, "I'm a painter. I'm not really a celebrity, or famous, or perhaps a star, and that i never, ever, ever is going to be, because that's not transpire... Things I'm really looking forward to -- also it required us a very long time to have it, to comprehend it -- is the fact that I be capable of spread love and empathy into the world. That's why I'm here." On meeting George Clooney "We met in the first table read... I wasn't intimidated with 'George Clooney' until I saw him, and my heart began pounding, and that i was like, 'Oh, that's George Clooney!' After which he came over, and offered me a giant hug, and stated, 'Welcome, sweety!' Something really warm. And, from that moment on, he wasn't 'George Clooney' during my eyes he was George Clooney from Kentucky." In this area by which she will get some not so good news "The script stated, 'She goes under water and distorts her face,' or something like that much like that. I'm really comfortable within the water -- I had been born within the water, began swimming at one-and-a-half, therefore the water happens to be Shai's safe zone. Therefore it really was exciting that i can have a character that has just heard this... awful news about her family -- her mother -- and also to have the ability to escape in to the water... It had been just like a baby inside a womb -- no-one can hear you you may be vulnerable and nobody knows. And i believe which was a very special moment, not just for Alexandra, but, selfishly, for me personally. It had been like my very own therapy session!" In this area by which she gives some not so good news "To cry wasn't hard -- I'm very in contact with my emotional side I don't know why. But to cry wasn't hard since the words evoked the emotion. That which was fun about this scene ended up being to not cry, to hold it in. I understand that sounds strange, but that's almost harder sometimes than really crying... It had been an attractive moment for me personally because I truly reached express her in the manner I needed with no sense of being rushed, or annoying, or anybody knowing me." In this area by which she talks up on her father "Which was an excellent moment because, at first from the film, Alexandra is extremely estranged from her family, and Matt is, too, in different ways. I'd prefer to believe that, when she was more youthful, they'd an extremely close relationship, and, through a number of occasions in her own existence, they, type of, grew to become detached... I believe that scene in the finish -- when she stacks up for him, so when Nick Krause's character Sid stacks up for him -- is really beautiful since it's the ultimate arc from the story... It's the very first time, I believe, she recognizes her father, or at best shows other people that they sees him as a person. It had been full circle." Toronto Worldwide Film Festival George Clooney Shailene Woodley The Descendants