ACTIVIST FINDS DESTINY IN TWO WORLDS

SPECIAL CHARACTER ACTOR FINDS LIFE DEFINING ROLES

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

When Shailene Woodley joined the protest against the underground Dakota Access Pipeline she had already spent a bit of time teaching youths to foster sustainable change for themselves and the environment.

That same year, Woodley portrayed Lindsay Mills in the Oliver Stone biopic Snowden (2016), starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden.

Snowden had trained himself into becoming a computer genius that the United States Central Intelligence Agency found useful in the development of cyber space surveillance technology. But when Snowden finds out the true scope and breadth of the technology, he leaks the information to the international media.

Woodley plays Snowden’s girlfriend who supports him during the good times and the bad times.

Woodley then stars in Adrift (2018) as Tami Oldham, the true to life passenger on an ocean shipwreck. Sam Claflin costars as Richard Sharp who meets Oldham as she begins a work and travel adventure, but nothing could have prepared the newly minted couple for being set adrift after a violent ocean storm damages the yacht they are sailing to the California coast.

Woodley’s performance takes her character through a number of life altering stages that may or may not be fruitlessly attempts to stave off death.

In The Mauritanian (2021) Woodley again is cast in a biopic film as Teri Duncan, costarring Tahar Rahim as Ould Slahi, Jodie Foster as Nancy Hollander and Benedict Cumberbatch as Stuart Couch.

Slahi is being held at the Guantanamo Bay US Military prison for detainees suspected of involvement in the 9/11 Terrorist Attack on the New York World Trade Center.

Hollander is retained to represent Slahi, with Duncan acting as a paralegal. Cumberbatch plays the military lawyer who initially more than willingly prosecutes the case.  

Woodley always shows a high standard of dedication to the task at hand. In Snowden, Mills falls in love with the young secret agent, and when he decides to risk life and limb for the American people, Mills stays by his side and goes into exile in Russia with him.

As Duncan, the paralegal, Woodley shows how a first visit in Cuba transforms into something much more complicated, but she stays with the idea of litigating Slahi’s freedom through the United States court system.

In Adrift, Oldham must transform physically and metaphysically to survive adrift at sea. But at Standing Rock, North Dakota, Woodley stayed a bit too long, and found herself on one year probation after pleading guilty to criminal trespass.