There is no doubt that 2014 has been the year of Shailene Woodley… and it's only June.
The Golden Globe-nominated actress has starred in two of the year's most highly anticipated films, The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, so it's hard to imagine that number was originally supposed to be three.
Woodley, 22, shot scenes for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as Peter Parker's (Andrew Garfield) future love interest, Mary Jane Watson, but was eventually cut out of the movie.
In the July issue of Vanity Fair, the actress opens up about her initial reaction to hearing the news.
"For a few hours it was literally like, 'Oh, my God, was I awful? Why did they cut me? What are people going to think?'" Woodley reveals. "I woke up the next morning and I was like, 'Okay, it makes total sense.' I’m a pretty spiritual person, so I can just sit back and trust that everything happens for a reason, even if my ego doesn't like it."
Director Marc Webb told the Los Angeles Times in May that leaving out Woodley was one of the toughest decisions he had to make.
“Shailene is a brilliant actress, and she did a great couple days of work,” he explained. “But it was very difficult to introduce someone as a competing love interest when so much is on the table with Peter and Gwen."
Webb elaborated that they couldn’t have anticipated that at the script stage. "It was something we only discovered when we were shooting and then in the edit room," he said, noting that it was "hard, very hard."
Woodley is the frontrunner to take on the role in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but nothing formal has been announced.
It's hard to imagine that there was a period where Woodley considered giving up acting altogether following her breakout role in The Descendants.
"Somebody came to me and said, 'I can't wait to see what you do next.' I took that as pressure — that I had to live up to somebody else's expectations," she recalls in Vanity Fair. "There were a few months where I was like, 'I don’t want to act anymore.' And then I got over it and realized it's none of my business what other people think of me."
Good thing she changed her mind… we just can't imagine a world where Woodley wasn't Hazel Grace.
