Nine or ten weeks ago I wrote about meeting Descendants costar Shailene Woodley at the Sheridan bar during the Tellluride Film Festival. What I didn’t report was that 10 or 15 minutes after saying hello I accidentally whacked Woodley in the chin with the back of my left hand. I was telling a joke or delivering some impassioned opinion…whap! I went “oh, no…my God!” and profusely apologized and gave Woodley a slight hug, but I felt like an absolute fool.
Sasha Stone was standing a couple of feet away, and right after it happened she looked at me as if I’d just run over a small kitten or vomited all over the President of the United States. Her hands were covering her mouth; her eyes were popping out of her head.
But to her immense credit, Woodley smiled and shrugged and waved it off. I don’t know if she was dealing with any pain and she was covering it up for my sake or if it really was nothing, but I was immediately impressed by her generosity and poise. Another kind of actress might have bent over and acted shocked and wounded and held her nose and gone “oh…oh, wow…Jesus!” and invite everyone’s sympathy. But Woodley, whatever physical sensations she was actually feeling, was super-cool and gracious. I decided right away that she was a Howard Hawks woman.
I brought up the Telluride chin-whap when I saw Woodley a couple of hours ago in a Four Seasons suite, and she said the exact same thing about it being nothing, barely caused her to blink and so on. Anyway, she’s got my vote. Here’s our brief discussion about this and that.
