Julia Stiles
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Julia Stiles
Julia O’Hara Stiles (born March 28, 1981) is an American stage and screen actress.
After beginning her career in small parts in a New York City theatre troupe, Julia Stiles has moved on to leading roles in plays by writers as diverse as William Shakespeare and David Mamet. Her film career has included both commercial and critical successes, ranging from teen romantic comedies such as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) to dark art house pictures such as The Business of Strangers (2001). Julia Stiles also actively supports a variety of progressive causes.
The role that gained Julia Stiles renown was Kat Stratford, opposite Heath Ledger, in Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew set in a high school near Tacoma, Washington. Julia Stiles won an MTV Movie Award for "Breakthrough Female Performance" for the role, and the Chicago Film Critics voted her the most promising new actress of the year. Foreign critics applauded her work as well, including Adina Hoffman, who praised her as "a young, serious looking Diane Lane" and Martin Hoyle, who commented that Julia Stiles played Kat "with bloody-minded independent charm from the beginning with hints of wistfulness beneath the determination."
In David Mamet’s State and Main (2000), about a film shooting on location in a small town in Vermont, Julia Stiles played a teenage girl who seduces a film actor (Alec Baldwin) with a weakness for young girls. Julia Stiles also played opposite Stockard Channing in the dark art house film The Business of Strangers (2001) as a conniving, amoral secretary who exacts revenge on her cold boss. Channing was impressed by her co-star: "In addition to her talent, Julia Stiles has a quality that is almost feral, something that can make people uneasy. Julia Stiles has an effect on people." Julia Stiles also had a small but crucial role as Treadstone operative Nicolette "Nicky" Parsons in The Bourne Identity (2002), a role that was enlarged in The Bourne Supremacy (2004), then greatly expanded in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007).
Between the Bourne films, Julia Stiles appeared in Mona Lisa Smile (2003) as Joan, a student at Wellesley College in 1953, whose art professor (Julia Roberts) encourages her to pursue a career in law rather than becoming a wife and mother. Critic Stephen Holden referred to her as one of cinema’s "brightest young stars," but the film met with generally unfavorable reviews.
Julia Stiles played a Wisconsin college student who is swept off her feet by a Danish prince in The Prince and Me (2004), directed by Martha Coolidge. Julia Stiles told an interviewer that she was very similar to the character, Paige Morgan. But critic Scott Foundas said while she was, as always, "irrepressibly engaging", the film was a "strange career choice for Julia Stiles". This echoed criticism in reviews of A Guy Thing (2003), a romantic comedy with Jason Lee and Selma Blair. Critic Dennis Harvey wrote that Julia Stiles was "wasted," and Stephen Holden called her "a serious actress from whom comedy does not seem to flow naturally".
She returned to the Bourne series with a much larger role inThe Bourne Ultimatum in 2007. Producer Lynda Obst was quoted as saying that Julia Stiles was "turning into the next Meryl Streep". Julia Stiles will next work on a film adaptation of The Bell Jar, which coincidentally was a book her character was seen reading in her breakthrough film 10 Things I Hate About You. Julia Stiles also appears in the forthcoming film Gospel Hill. Julia Stiles will act in the role of a woman who falls in love with her stalker in the upcoming thriller Cry of the Owl.
