Shailene Woodley thinks her fellow Hollywood environmental activists must have felt they were “screaming into the void” when they started raising climate change issues.
The ‘Ferrari’ actress, 32, has been actively campaigning for environmental causes since she was a child actor appearing in films such as ‘The Divergent’ and ‘The Descendants’, and got arrested protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota in 2016.
She told The Hollywood Reporter about following in the footsteps of eco campaigning A-listers including Leonardo DiCaprio and Susan Sarandon: “When I first started talking about this publicly, 15, 16 years ago, it was like, ‘Oh, that cute little hippie girl.’
“I’m definitely a tree hugger, but it was looked at as this cute idealistic thing instead of a real cause to pay attention to.
“I look at people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Susan Sarandon, Edward Norton, Harrison Ford – people who have been having this conversation publicly for a very long time.
“It must have felt like screaming into the void. And now there are finally other people who have joined that chorus.
“I’ve met people who have been trying to have this conversation for decades, and there is a feeling of exhaustion, of, ‘Where were all of you 20 years ago? Why does everyone suddenly care now?’
“Oftentimes, until it’s on our doorstep, we don’t want to pay attention.”
Shailene’s latest bid to spotlight an environmental issue sees her diving for purple urchins in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Catalina Island in the new PBS docuseries ‘Hope in the Water’, made by ‘Big Little Lies’ creator David E Kelley and chef Andrew Zimmern.
Shailene’s episode will be shown on 3 July, and she said about taking on the project: “So often when it comes to the environment, specifically with culinary consumerism, the mass majority of people are left out of the conversation for economic or accessibility reasons.
“The biggest question I had going into this was, ‘Who is the audience? Who are the people who can participate?’
“I really loved the fact that it was so inclusive of so many people, regardless of economics or location accessibility… it’s really talking to consumers and people who live in food deserts and who don’t only live near coastal regions.”
