Shailene Woodley doesn’t want to be Kristen Stewart, and she doesn’t want all of the headaches that come with being the star of a big budgeted franchise film. At least that’s how she used to feel, she said.

When the 22-year-old accepted the role of Beatrice “Tris” Prior in the film Divergent , she was worried that it would completely take over her life, and she would go from a person who focuses on her craft to a mere Hollywood celebrity, and that’s not why she started acting in the first place, she said.

But later Woodley realized that she’s being unnecessarily fearful and thinking too much about the film’s aftermath and not enough about whether she really wanted to do it or not.

And it’s the first time she had to think about these kinds of things, she said, because Divergent isn’t your everyday movie and working on it isn’t your everyday type of commitment.

“With a big franchise like this, you commit yourself to three years of work,” she said. “Also, you could see how it affected Kristen Stewart and Jennifer Lawrence and I just wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted. But I finally realized, ‘Dude, I’m making a creative decision based on fear,’ and that’s not how I want to live my life.”

It’s clear that Woodley has a certain depth to her and she’s not your run-of-the-mill Hollywood starlet, because not only does she speak a lot about being on a perpetual quest for personal and creative fulfillment, she has a keen desire to learn all she can about the different cultures of the world. And she’s a nature lover too, and prefers being surrounded by natural beauty rather than the man-made kind.

“I am interested in herbalism and indigenous cultures and am just very passionate about the earth,” explained Woodley. “I could live in the wilderness. At the moment I’m passionate about food and the process of growing it, eating it and seeing how your body reacts. I don’t think I’ve eaten McDonalds since I was nine.”

Image via YouTube