Shailene Woodley Credits Her Confidence to Kate Winslet

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 2, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 2, 2024 |

I have never really understood Shailene Woodley, especially after whatever that was with Aaron Rodgers, and I suspect we don’t have much in common. We do, however, share an adoration of Kate Winslet, whom she worked with on the Divergent movies.

“She’s so—not to overuse the word real—but she’s just real,” Woodley recently said of Winslet on The Drew Barrymore Show. “She is who she is, and she’s not afraid to be who she is, and she’s done the hard work.”

Winslet has long been outspoken about her relationship with fame and the struggles of being a woman in the industry and just in general. Barrymore recalled for Woodley an interview in which Winslet said her “life was quite unpleasant” after Titanic, that “being famous was horrible,” and that she wished she’d stood up for herself more when she was criticized for her body. Woodley responded that Winslet made up for that by standing up for her when she was a young actress.

“We worked together. I was 21. I had all the influx of public life and was being told, ‘You should look a certain way,’ or ‘You should be a certain thing,’ or ‘Don’t eat that,’ or ‘Do this,’ or ‘Dye your hair a different color,’” she explained, describing how Winslet sat her down, held her shoulders, looked her in the eye, and said, “‘No, no, no, that’s not who you are, this is the truth.’ And she gave me that moment, and I would not be who I am today without her.”

Honestly, in a much less literal sense, neither would I. We talk a lot about women supporting women, but rarely do we see real examples of how that manifests positively in popular culture. This is that. I still don’t know who Shailene Woodley is, but if she was this influenced by Kate Winslet, maybe I’d like her after all.