“I thought a lot about it, and after meeting with people who they themselves were stuck with an oxygen tank 24/7, I realize that if I were to actually breathe the way Hazel, if she were a real person, would breathe, it wouldn’t translate visually to the screen,” she said, shortening her breath while answering. Shailene Woodley‘s Hazel Grace Lancaster has thyroid cancer with metastasis forming in her lungs, which causes her to carry around an oxygen tank and wear a cannula, and occasionally she has trouble breathing. Hazel is a fictional character, and she is in many important ways very different from the person Esther was.' Īuthor John Green also drew inspiration for the book from his time spent working as a student chaplain at a children's hospital. All that said, I really don't want to seem to be appropriating Esther's story, which belongs to her and to her family and not to me. But she was also silly and funny and totally normal. 'What inspired me most,' says Green, 'was Esther's unusual mix of teenagerness and empathy: She was a very outwardly focused person, very conscious of and attentive to her friends and family. 'So much of the story was inspired by her and my friendship with her and my affection for her family and friends,' says author John Green, 'but I didn't take very many specific things (except for superficial stuff like the oxygen and whatnot).' Esther died of thyroid cancer on Augat age sixteen. The Fault in Our Stars book and subsequent movie were inspired in part by Esther Earl (pictured above, right).

In addition to helping break pre-sale movie ticket records for a romantic drama, fans have created The Fault in Our Stars t-shirts and artwork like the tee above.

The fault in our stars movie characters