Shailene Woodley is upstairs from Animal Haven, a pet shelter tucked just off Canal Street in downtown Manhattan, curled into a couch on a quiet fall morning. She’s here on behalf of Mars, the pet food brand, to help raise awareness around a global adoption weekend initiative. (The event date has passed — but, as she notes, there are still plenty of animals out there who need homes.) She’s also promoting an audio “sleep story” she recorded for the mental health app Calm, in partnership with Mars — a soothing tale about a bodega cat and a train-obsessed Italian dog, narrated in her whispery Big Little Lies register, designed to lull both humans and their pets into dreamland.
It all makes sense for Woodley, who doesn’t see a dividing line between her passion for animals and her environmental activism. “For me, the only thing that really makes sense in life is nature, because it’s what we all have come from, and it’s what we will all return to,” she says. “We are part of this symbiotic relationship and ecosystem that, being in New York City, is easy to lose sight of.”
A treasured part of her own animal exchange was a German shepherd — 4 years old when she adopted him — who rarely left her side through the years they spent together. He accompanied her to hotels and film sets around the world before dying at age 9. “He adapted so well, and we were really there for each other,” she says.
Since then, she’s become a cat person — or rather, a two-cat person. Her current companions are a pair of dark-furred rescues named Bear and Pharrah. “There is a comfort and ease that I feel with cats that takes me to another level of joy,” she says. “I find cats to be endlessly fascinating and mysterious and completely enthralling.” Pharrah: cuddly, sensual, “love embodied.” Bear: insomniac clown, randomly does seven back flips in a row, eats raw garlic.
Her cats may not have agents, spa days or concierge chaperones like some of the four-legged subjects featured in this issue. But for Woodley, they’re vital co-stars all the same.
Courtesy of Calm
This story appeared in the Oct. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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