[citation needed] He began acting at the age of ten, when he appeared in a small role in one of his father's films,[1] and spent time on the set of a number of other films, including Free Willy and The Getaway.
[2] His grandmother, filmmaker Elaine Madsen, encouraged him to pursue a career in acting after watching his performances in high school theater.
[4] He eventually moved in with his grandmother when he was 17, and she took him to the Actors Studio and introduced him to the head of its Hollywood branch, Martin Landau.
[3] He had been auditioning without any successes for over two years[4] and was about to be evicted from his Los Angeles apartment when he won a role in Divergent, a film adaptation of Veronica Roth's young adult novel of the same name.
[5] In 2013, he also appeared in Palo Alto, a drama film directed by Gia Coppola, and he has been cast in Jack Squared.