Shailene Woodley doesn't have hair or beauty treatments when she isn't working

She said: "Normally when I’m not working, I don’t cut my hair, I don’t dye my hair, I don’t do anything to my body because I just like, wait until whatever’s next.

“I’ve had nails for characters before, but I was like, ‘I’m going to do it for me.’ ”

Although she's been acting since she was five, Shailene took several lengthy breaks in her late teens and early 20s to go backpacking around Europe and is proud she was able to step back from Hollywood.

She told The Hollywood Reporter: "“I look back on my 18-, 19-, 22-year-old self and I’m in awe of my ability to say no.

“I had no responsibilities. I got rid of mostly everything I owned and lived out of a suitcase. I didn’t feel pressure to work to make money. It was a very simple life. Because I wasn’t surrounded by the rhetoric of this industry and of Hollywood, I don’t think I knew anything other than saying no.”

And Shailene recalled a backpacking trip to Italy with a friend, where they were staying in hostels until she connected with her 'Descendants co-star George Clooney, who has a home in Lake Como.

She said: “We’re staying in some shitty hostel in the middle of Milan, and he was like, ‘Send me your address. I’ll send a car'. I was like, ‘No, we’ll just get a train.’ He was like, ‘Give me your f****** address.’

"So I gave him the address and we come outside, it’s this beautiful Lincoln Town Car and these scraggly, dirty women with our backpacks."

The 'Big Little Lies' star thinks the moment highlighted perfectly all her different experiences and how they've shaped her into the person she is today.

She added: "That was a sweet, funny moment in life where I got to experience so many different worlds from such a young age, the really big lives and the really small lives.

"I feel so f****** grateful that the perspectives that I’ve been given now as an adult have all come through my desire as a young person to not spend all of my time in L.A. trying to pursue a career or to be something that I wasn’t.”