Shailene Woodley 'Couldn't Walk Longer Than 5 Minutes at a Time' onDivergentSet Due to Health Scare

Mar. 15, 2025

Shailene Woodley in 2023.Photo:VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty

VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty

Shailene Woodleyis opening up about a mystery health issue she experienced while working on theDivergentfilm franchise.

Appearing on the Tuesday, Sept. 24 episode of theSHE MDpodcast with Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Thais Aliabadi, the actress, 32, recalled how she was plagued with debilitating physical symptoms during her early 20s.

“I was losing my hearing. I couldn’t walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours and hours and hours and sleep. Everything I ate hurt my stomach,” theThree Womenstar said, adding to the hosts that she wasn’t going to disclose what caused her symptoms because it “feels like a personal thing.”

“I’ve always eaten very healthy and I’m very athletic. And so, it was a confusing process for me to go, ‘Well, what am I doing wrong? Why am I passing out every month when I get my period? Why am I hypothyroid? Why am I all of these things?’ And one doctor being like, ‘It’s probably endometriosis.’ And another doctor going, ‘It’s probably this.’ And another one going, ‘It’s probably that.’ ‘You have a tilted uterus. You have a heart-shaped uterus.’ Every person I went to was giving me mixed information, and it set me on my own journey,” she continued.

Shailene Woodley in ‘Divergent’.Red Wagon Entertainment/Kobal/Shutterstock

Red Wagon Entertainment/Kobal/Shutterstock

TheBig Little Liesstar went on to share that she went on a “long journey” to feel well again, adding it took “about a decade of unwinding and healing and getting healthy.”

Admitting she took her health “into my own hands,” Woodley said she devoted her time to educating herself and “approaching it from an internal holistic place” and the health issue “ultimately physically resolved itself.”

“And now … I’m not on thyroid medication anymore. I’m not on any medication anymore. My hormones are so balanced. Everything is pumping in the way that it should.” she continued, adding that she is “very healthy now.”

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Shailene Woodley in June 2024.Corine Solberg/Getty

Corine Solberg/Getty

However, there were also mental symptoms that came with her physical ones. “A lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically,” she said. “I’m now suddenly afraid of food. And then body dysmorphia and confusion about identity and feeling safe in my own skin.”

“It forced me to really take a deep look and become introspective,” she explained. “That was, I guess, the path for me, alongside the physical healing, was acknowledging the mental side of the healing process for myself, which involved looking at real traumas and real PTSD that I had experienced at various times in my life, without going into detail about what they were.”

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Woodley starred alongside the likes ofTheo James,Kate Winslet,Zoë KravitzandMiles Telleras a young girl living in a future dystopian Chicago in which society was divided into five factions: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite.

A fourth and final film, titledAscendant, was meant to conclude the franchise, though it never came to fruition due toAllegiant’s lackluster box office performance.

Woodleypreviously discussed her health concernduring a 2021 interview withThe Hollywood Reporterand revealed that the condition forced her to turn down roles because because she “physically couldn’t participate in them.”

Woodley currently stars alongside Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise and Gabrielle Creevy inThree Womenon Starz. New episodes premiere every Friday on Starz.

source: people.com