SANTA MONICA — Twenty-year-old Shailene Woodley, practically at a loss for words, won the Best Supporting Female Spirit, and thanked everyone associated with "The Descendants" for helping her grow up.
The four months she spent making the movie, Woodley said in accepting the award, were "four months that shaped my young-adult life."
"As an 18-year-old," she added backstage, "it was kind of a catalyst for me coming into my own."
Woodley, who played the headstrong teenage daughter of George Clooney in "The Descendants," lavished special praise on Clooney and director Alexander Payne.
She labelled Clooney "the head of all happiness," and credited him for urging her to "look beyond the bubbles we associate with ourselves everyday."
Woodley, heretofore best known for starring in the TV series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," would emerge as the lone Spirit winner among the actors who would not be competing for an Oscar Sunday. Not that that seemed to bother her all that much.
"I am so stoked for Octavia," she said, referring to Oscar favorite Octavia Spencer of "The Help." The almost surefire winner, she said, "is such a "nice human being."