I think everything everything about my lifestyle is fairly alternative. I gather my own spring water from mountains every month. I go to a farm to get my food. I make everything from my own toothpaste to my own body lotions and face oils. I could go on for hours. I make my own medicines; I don’t get those from doctors. I make my own cheese and forage wild foods and identify wild plants. It’s an entire lifestyle. It’s appealing to my soul.

Everyone today is like, 'Shailene, you're getting so much buzz. How does the feel?' It's the most odd question because it's like asking a kid who got into Cornell how it feels to be the top of your class at one of the Ivy League schools. How do you answer that? You just go, 'I don't know.

Everything that I own and use are in a carry-on suitcase.

I started studying herbalism and edible plants that existed in the wild. And then I realized, "Okay, cool. I know how to make a fire with sticks and I know how to build a shelter, but I live 90 percent of my life in an urban environment, so these skills aren't really going to help me because there aren't trees that grow in Los Angeles that I can just take a branch and make fire out of, because that wood isn't conducive for that. So I started learning urban survival skills.

As a teenager, my struggle was how do I balance being empathetic and compassionate towards my peers, while also living my life for myself and not basing my decisions on those around me, and really living a life where I receive my happiness from my own experiences rather than from people pleasing.

I feel like I'm kind of an obvious person. I like to keep some things in my life sacred, like keep the sacred, sacred. Apart from that part of my life, I'm a very open person.

So many times, you get a script and it says, "And then, the character cries," and you read the lines and think, "That would never make me cry. Those lines are so untruthful." My approach is just to be honest to the situation.