While Shailene Woodley is having the summer many actresses can only dream of, there was a time before she was making us cry in love-riddled YA fare and making us leap from our seats in inspiring action-packed trilogies.

Shailene got a young start in the industry, landing many commercials starting at the young age of 4. Those spots got her noticed, and guest-starring spots on many TV shows followed. She landed a spot on one of the hottest series at the time, The O.C. and that was a huge boon to her career. Simultaneously she worked on two other high profile shows, Crossing Jordan and Jack & Bobby.

While many actresses have tried and failed to navigate the awkward teen years and had careers stall out, Shailene has done so with grace and aplomb. In 2008 she landed the plumb role as Amy Juergens on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. The show was a perfect storm of right network, right time, and standout cast, and Shailene became known as the face of many important conversations about teenage sexuality that weren’t behind had openly before that moment.

After the show ended, Shailene has openly spoken about how she tried to distance herself from that kind of fare, and wavered in what role to take next. Thankfully, she took the role of Tris in the wildly successful Divergent book series. She’s gone on record saying Jennifer Lawrence encouraged her to take the role, citing her own experience with The Hunger Games. We’re very glad she did, as Shailene kills it as Tris. This summer we’re seeing her return to her more character-driven dramatic roots in a more adult role than we’ve ever seen her – The Fault In Our Stars. While Hazel would be a difficult role to play for any actress, Shailene definitely has the chops to pull it off. We’re sure we will be seeing Shailene grace the screen for many years, if not decades to come, and on this Throwback Thursday, we’re happy to take a look back at what brought her to where she is now.