Julia Stiles talks about 10 Things I Hate About You on its 25th anniversary

The New York Times did a very sweet profile of Julia Stiles to celebrate the 25th anniversary of 10 Things I Hate About You, the 1999 film which is loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew. Julia played the lead, Kat, and Heath Ledger played Patrick. It was a fun movie but I have not seen it in years. It feels like so many of those ‘90s films are “coming back,” mostly because audiences just miss mid-budget comedies and fun teen movies. 10 Things had a smart script and a great cast, and it was a modest success at the time. Julia was already somewhat famous, but this was the moment when she really “became” very famous. She ran away from fame in a big way but she’s continued to work consistently while also taking breaks to have babies. That’s one of the big reveals in this Times piece – Julia quietly gave birth to her third child five months ago. Some highlights:

Welcoming her third child: “I’m kind of like a bundle of emotions, because I have a 5-month-old baby and I went into directing my first movie. I didn’t really talk about it,” she said of her latest pregnancy, though she was excited to talk about it now, about how being a parent (her older sons are 6 and 2) nourishes her work. “I think that actually being a mom is really great training for being a director. You have to think 10 steps ahead but also be in the present moment. You have to be good at time management. You have to be sensitive to people’s needs and guide them, but also hold a boundary.”

Her early acting experiences: “I was a 17-year-old girl, auditioning for romantic comedies and commercials and TV shows and always being told, ‘You’re too serious.’ You know, ‘Smile. You’re too angsty.’” That changed when she read the “10 Things” script. “It was the first time that I had read a character in a teenage romantic comedy that spoke to me.”

Handling fame: “How did I handle it? I sometimes imploded. I also rebelled against it, probably, by running in the other direction a little bit.” Rather than go all-in on acting to capitalize on whatever momentum she had from “Ten Things,” Stiles attended Columbia University. “I went to college so that I could focus on other things. I would take time off from work … to not give it as much power.” She also worried that one day she would be the only one among her peers who hadn’t gone to college. “I know that I was thinking: I don’t want to be sitting around at 40 with a bunch of studio executives or other people that have had that experience and I didn’t.”

Her work in the Bourne movies: Stiles was in her dorm room freshman year when she was sent pages from “The Bourne Identity” script. All she could think was: Oh my God, I can’t do this because I’m going to miss my final exams. She took the part and lost all her credits from that semester. “But I was at least able to go and do the movie and still graduate.”

She felt professionally unmoored in her 30s. “There’s only so much control that actors have over their own careers,” she said. She wasn’t necessarily worried that she’d never get to act anymore. “But it was like, am I going to only be given opportunities to work on things that I don’t really believe in or don’t really care about? They’re not going to know what to do with me, because I’m not the ingénue anymore and I’m not the mom. So what’s in between?”

[From The NY Times]

I remember when Julia popped up in The Bourne Identity, I was actually surprised that she took a smaller part in an action-drama when, not even three years beforehand, she was being hyped as the next big thing. It was smart for her to go to college, but that absolutely stopped the momentum of her career in those days. I found it interesting when Julia worked with Kirsten Dunst in Mona Lisa Smile, because it felt like they were probably going up for the same roles constantly and they would end up having similar careers. That isn’t what happened though.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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