Before They Were Stars: 11-Year Old Shailene Woodley on the Pilot for “The O.C.”

I can’t believe I actually lowered myself to doing extensive research on The O.C., but this is an interesting bit of trivia. At age eleven, Shailene Woodley got one of her earliest roles when she was cast as Kaitlin Cooper (the younger sister of Mischa Barton’s character) on the first season of The O.C.. She appeared in six episodes, but at the end of the season, Kaitlin was shipped off to boarding school and disappeared. However, by the time the third reason rolled around, the show runners decided to bring Kaitlin back and make her a full-time character… and cast another actor in the role! By her own admission, Woodley was a late bloomer when it came to puberty (in fact, the exact words she used were “I was the 15-year old who had no boobs”), so by this point, she was no longer a convincing choice to portray Kaitlin as a teenager and was unceremoniously replaced by Willa Holland.