Shailene Woodley Slams Twilight Series: It Was About a "Very Unhealthy, Toxic Relationship"

Divergent star says Bella and Edward's romance is "not going to help this world evolve"

By Zach Johnson Mar 12, 2014 12:06 PMTags
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Shailene Woodley has followed in the footsteps of fellow actresses Jennifer Lawrence, Kristen Stewart and Lily Collins by signing on to star in film adaptations of best-selling young adult novels.

While she felt a kinship with The Hunger Games' Lawrence—even asking her for advice before accepting the lead role in Divergent—Woodley doesn't feel the same affinity for Stewart's series.

"Twilight, I'm sorry, is about a very unhealthy, toxic relationship," Woodley says of the romance between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, played by Stewart and her real-life ex Robert Pattinson. "She falls in love with this guy and the second he leaves her, her life is over and she's going to kill herself! What message are we sending to young people? That is not going to help this world evolve."

Woodley knows a thing or two about teenage love stories—in the last two years, she's starred in The Spectacular Now opposite Miles Teller and the upcoming The Fault in Our Stars opposite Ansel Elgort.

In fact, nearly all of her movies since 2011's The Descendants have been about romance. "That's crazy! I never thought about that," Woodley tells Teen Vogue in its April issue. "I haven't had time to think about a relationship! I literally have not had a boyfriend in almost five years. I've never even hooked up with anybody I've worked on a movie with." But what about after a movie wrapped? She laughs before offering a coy answer. "Well, that might have happened on something..." Woodley teases.

To be fair, Woodley did get cast as Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and she even filmed scenes with Andrew Garfield. Her character was cut from the film due to a reworked plot.

"After The Descendants, everybody was like, 'You've got to ride the wave!' And I was like, 'You ride the wave and it eventually crashes on the shore. That doesn't work out! I'm going to just sit here and paddleboard.' I didn't do a movie for two years because I didn't read anything that was inspiring to me."

Enter Divergent. After reading author Veronica Roth's trilogy, Woodley was hooked.

"Doing an action movie is completely different from one based in reality. It's much harder to act with a green screen than with another human being," says the star, who hopes to do more indies in the future. "There are so many special effects in this film, so it was really amazing to see how they turned out."