Shailene Woodley Swam for 1 Hour Every Day to Prepare for 1 Movie
Shailene Woodley is no stranger to movies. The Endings, Beginnings star has been acting since the very young age of 5. Throughout the course of her career, she has played a number of different roles. She has starred in indie movies like The Fallout and wildly popular TV shows like Big Little Lies. Each role requires something different from Woodley. One movie even required Woodley to adopt a pretty intense fitness regiment.
Shailene Woodley had to improve her fitness level for some of her movies
Training for a movie is not something that Woodley seems to shy away from. The actor had a pretty intense fitness routine when she was filming the three Divergent movies. However, one of her most extreme workout routines came when she was training for the 2018 film, Adrift. The movie follows a young couple who must fight for survival after sailing into one of the most disastrous hurricanes in history. In an interview with Livestrong, Woodley explained how she prepared for the role.
‘The O.C.’ alum swam for at least an hour a day after joining the ‘Adrift’ cast
“I swam at least an hour every single day to sort of build the shoulder strength that was required for this character,” Woodley explained. “Because as sailors, you have to be really strong. Sailing looks very romantic, and it looks very easy because good sailors make it look easy. But it’s actually quite difficult and requires a lot of upper-body strength, which I did not have. So our training was mostly focused on upper body building.”
But having an extreme fitness routine isn’t the only thing that Woodley had to do in order to prep for her role in Adrift. She also had to follow an extreme diet in order to portray her character, Tami Oldham. This, Woodley explained, was a bit of a challenge for her. She admits that she actually had to use alcohol to help her manage hunger pains.
Woodley also had to follow an extreme diet and lose a lot of weight for ‘Adrift’
“While we were shooting this project, I had to lose quite a bit of weight to portray this woman’s journey [of] being stuck at sea for 41 days,” Woodley revealed. “And Sam Claflin [who starred alongside Woodley in Adrift] had to lose quite a bit of weight as well. So he had no dinner for about two or three months. I didn’t eat dinner for one month and had a glass of wine before bed to kind of quiet down my hungry stomach and crash.”
Continuing on, Woodley revealed her full diet going into the last weeks of shooting Adrift. “And then for about two weeks towards the end of filming,” Woodley explained. “I was eating one can of salmon, two egg yolks, and some steamed vegetables, and that was it. And that was gnarly. My body was getting all the nutrients it needed through those salmon eggs. But my stomach was not happy about the lack of carbohydrates to crunch on and to build energy from, so that was definitely a lesson in resiliency and not something I would ever do recreationally.”
