After winning over millions of fans as Kat Stratford in the smash teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, Julia Stiles shot to fame in the late 1990s.
She quickly rose to the top of Hollywood’s list of most-wanted actresses; in the early 2000s, her face could be seen on nearly every tabloid.
However, how frequently do you hear her name now?
Many thought the young, beautiful actress would have a successful career in the entertainment business. She abruptly left Hollywood’s glitz and glamour to pursue something completely different.
So, what has happened to Julia Stiles? Actually, quite a lot.
began acting when she was 11 years old.
Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You was Julia Stiles’ breakthrough role, but she was already a very accomplished actress at that point.
She began performing with the La MaMa Theater Company in New York City at the age of 11. After being introduced to off-Broadway plays by her parents when she was younger, she became a lifelong theater fan.
Julia, who was born in New York City in 1981, was raised in a family of scholars and artists. The native New Yorker grew up in Soho’s loft conversions as the neighborhood began to change from an industrial wasteland to an artist community.
New York City was a tough, drug-filled city in the early 1980s. Growing up next to the East River required caution, especially since the nearby soccer fields served as a playground.
“We’d pick up dimes and needles, although you wouldn’t pick up the needles, I suppose. A teacher would arrive after you pointed to it and said, “There’s a needle,” Julia said in 2007.
However, she had a generally happy upbringing.
In contrast to her father, John O’Hara, who worked as an elementary school teacher, Julia’s mother, Judith Newcomb Stiles, was a Greenwich Village artist. John Junior and Jane, another sibling who also became an actress, were also present when Julia was growing up.
Initial movies.
The romantic drama I Love You, I Love You Not gave 15-year-old Julia her first acting break when she appeared alongside Claire Danes and Jude Law.
Some supporting roles then came next.
Finally, in 1999, with the release of 10 Things I Hate About You, Julia achieved success. With Heath Ledger, one of Hollywood’s biggest heartthrobs, as her co-star, Julia played the disobedient Kat Stratford.
Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew was adapted into a comedy for teens that focused on the struggles of high school students in the United States, and it was a huge hit. Teen rom-coms were a popular genre in the late 1990s, starring a lot of young, talented actresses in Hollywood.
Kate Hudson, Katie Holmes, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Kirsten Dunst were some of the dignitaries Julia had to contend with. But she was adamant that she would get the part in 10 Things I Hate About You.
I thought it was so refreshing to see a teenage girl be feisty and opinionated and be a fish out of water, but proudly [so], she said, according to an interview she gave to InStyle in 2009.
Anyone who has seen the film will be able to tell that Julia and Heath Ledger had excellent on-screen chemistry. However, it seems that Ledger’s Australian birth wasn’t a guarantee that he would even land the part. There were numerous applicants for the role, and Ledger’s Australian accent raised some questions.
Josh Hartnett, Eliza Dushku, Heath, and Julia underwent screening tests. The casting director, Marcia Ross, told The New York Times in 2019 that Heath and Julia had the best chemistry.
The entire movie, which earned $60 million, was shot on actual locations; no sets were used. Julia was chosen as the year’s most promising new actress and won the MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Female Performance.
It’s safe to say that after achieving stardom, Julia was under a lot of pressure. Many filmmakers wanted to cast the attractive, slim-eyed blonde in their upcoming project because Hollywood and the general public had high expectations for her.
Julia ultimately showed up in two additional Shakespearean adaptations for a variety of reasons.
One year after she found success with 10 Things I Hate About You, Julia played Ophelia in the Ethan Hawke-starring drama Hamlet. Then, in a boarding school-set adaptation of Othello called O, she played Desdemona.
They were coincidental events. I had no intention of producing three Shakespeare adaptations. However, it wasn’t totally conscious either. In 2001, Julia told reporters at the Toronto Film Festival, “They came to me as separate projects and intrigued me for different reasons.
Stiles’s next commercial success came in 2001 with Save the Last Dance. After that, she landed the role of Nicolette “Nicky” Parsons in the Jason Bourne movie franchise.
Throughout the 2000s, Julia frequently made several movie appearances each year, but by the decade’s end, she was far less active. When she decided to enroll at Columbia University at the height of her fame and success as an actress, she shocked her fans.
She took Latin American and English studies while juggling acting for many years. She graduated with a major in English literature in 2005. It’s difficult to say whether attending college while her career in Hollywood was booming helped or hurt her.
“Academic professionals don’t really give a s*** about me being in a movie or having to go the MTV Movie Awards. However, those working in the entertainment industry are also not particularly interested in higher education. That really helped me,” she remarked to The Daily Beast in 2019.
Julia was able to remain grounded thanks to her college education.
“The good thing about being in college was that people took little interest in me because they were so preoccupied with their own ambitions and exams. There is also the perception in academia that filmmaking isn’t all that important and is even considered to be somewhat demeaning. I found that to be refreshing, and I was determined to be taken seriously,” she said to Independent in 2007.
Julia was frequently questioned at the start of each semester about whether it was worthwhile for her to go back to her college dorm and continue her studies when there were movie roles and lucrative offers on the table.
“I don’t want to reach my fifties and regret not going back.
Of course, there were some odd moments when the celebrated teenage star tried to blend in with the other students.
“And then, yeah, there were some really funny, weird moments, like a limo for the MTV Movie Awards pulling up in front of my dormitory with my name on it,” Julia once said.
“Where it’s like, you’re like, ‘Oh God!’ So, no big deal. ”.
Highest-grossing film.
In 2008, Julia returned to the big screen when her character Nicky took on a much more significant role in The Bourne Ultimatum – her highest-grossing film to date. But unfortunately, that role wasn’t enough to take her back to the biggest movies in Hollywood.
Instead, Julia worked on non-mainstream projects – she also decided to fulfill a childhood dream by taking the role of Carol in the Broadway play Oleanna, starring opposite Bill Pullman.
Once, she was considered the “It” actress, but after some less successful movies, combined with her pursuit of a career on Broadway and in theatre, many people soon forgot Julia Stiles. As she aged, she personally felt left out by Hollywood – jumping from less glamorous job to job.
“I think a few years ago my frustration was feeling like nobody knew what to do with me,” she told The Daily Beast.
“You know, I had had some success in my twenties and now I’m in a different place in my life and I didn’t really fit anywhere. ”.
Turning point.
Her turning point came in 2019, when she was cast as journalist Elizabeth in Hustlers, a crime comedy-drama.
The film, shot in only 29 days and on a low budget, was a huge box office success. Starring alongside the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu, Julia felt she had something going again.
“A movie like Hustlers to me is such an affirmation that like I have a place in the film industry and stories that I’m interested in are being told,” she New York native said.
After ”just” being a former teen actress, Julia is now an experienced woman entirely in control of her career. She is set to make her directorial debut, and lately she’s been highly praised for her role in the crime drama Riviera. The British TV series, which features Julia in the lead role, revolves around a newlywed whose husband is killed in a yacht explosion.
It became so popular in the UK that it also made its way to the U.S., premiering on the channel Ovation in 2019.
Now, it’s hardly a secret that it’s difficult for aging women to hold their own in Hollywood.
Still, Julia Stiles has undoubtedly done pretty much all their is to do in front of the camera – she’s starred as the sweet girlfriend, then a mother, and now she often portrays darker, more complex characters. Looking back at her breakthrough in the ’90s, the Manhattanite, who has described herself as a feminist – has been part of transforming the industry.
In many ways, playing Kat in 10 Things I Hate About You was a career-defining moment for Julia.
In hindsight, her role as Kat was one of the few alternative intelligent and feminist characters in the era of teenage rom-coms. Today, the Riveria star says that “if I had even a small part in that evolution of confidence in women, I’m really happy. ”.
Fortunately, a lot of things have changed for the better.
“I think when I finally got cast in that role — and I was thrilled — I was probably worried at that time about, ‘Well, where is my whole career going to go when I’m approaching 40?’.
“Now we still have a long way to go but there has been a seismic shift in the entertainment industry where I feel like the roles that are coming my way and that are available to me and my peers, whether it’s behind the camera or in front of it, is even more interesting and exciting now than what we were doing in our 20s, generally,” Julia told InStyle.
Family life.
Julia is reportedly an avid fan of the New York Mets. Judging from the pictures on her Instagram account, she lives in New York City.
While in college, Julia dated actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but today she’s married to camera assistant Preston J. Cook. They first met when both were working with the movie Go with Me, in 2016.
The 10 Things I Hate About You star announced her engagement later that year. In 2017, while pregnant with a son, Julia and Preston tied the knot.
According to People, the wedding took place on Labor Day weekend with two friends on the beach in Seattle. Julia also announced the union on Instagram, accompanied by the funny caption:.
“Who doesn’t love a shotgun wedding?”.
Julias first son, Strummer Newcomb Cook, was born On October 20, 2017. In 2022, she welcomed her second child, a boy named Arlo.
“Welcome to the world, Baby Arlo! ✨ The newest addition to our family, reminding me how infinite love can be. ?,” Stiles wrote alongside a photo of the toddler’s feet.
I had no idea that Julia was still active as an actor, but at the same time, it’s clear that she’s on another path in her life, job-wise and family-wise.
But she seems to enjoy life, and she is a highly skilled actress! Good luck in the future, Julia! Besides, just when I think my head might explode, it’s such a relief to go back to Columbia where they don’t care what magazine cover I’m on,” she told the National Post in 2004.
