Julia Stiles

Julia O'Hara Stiles (born March 28, 1981 in New York City) is an American stage and screen actress. After beginning her theater career in small parts, she has moved on to leading roles in plays by writers as diverse as William Shakespeare and David Mamet; her film career has been both a commercial and critical success, 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). When Stiles isn't working, she actively supports a variety of progressive and liberal issues.

Contents

1 Personal 2 Stage career 3 Film career 4 Television 5 Filmography 6 References 7 External links

Personal

Julia Stiles was born the eldest of the three children (two daughters and a son) of John O'Hara, a teacher and businessman, and Judith Stiles, a potter. She attended a Quaker school in Manhattan and is an English major at Columbia University in New York City, though she has several times interrupted her studies to pursue her film career (she is graduating in May 2005, five years after entering College). Stiles is a Democrat who supported John Kerry's candidacy for President of the United States [1] (http://www.juliastiles.net/news.html#), and her official site, which her mother helps to maintain, provides a link to Moveon.org.

Stiles has also worked for Habitat for Humanity, building housing in Costa Rica [2] (http://www.habitat.org/newsroom/2000archive/1insitedoc004229.htm), and has worked with Amnesty International to try and raise awareness of the harsh conditions of immigration detention of unaccompanied juveniles; Marie Claire magazine, in January 2004, featured Stiles' trip to see conditions at the Berks County Youth Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania [3] (http://www.amnestyusa.org/artistsforamnesty/feb2004.html) [4] (http://www.amnestyusa.org/artistsforamnesty/july2004.html).

The actress has described herself as a feminist and wrote on the subject in The Guardian [5] (http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1240843,00.html):

Ironically, the F word [i.e., "Feminism"] is now pejorative in the mainstream because it is seen to represent a woman's renunciation of her femininity. It's an issue many women struggle with today — including female studio executives. After Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, women of my generation have not employed self-censorship, but rather we challenge the notion that being a feminist is in opposition to being feminine.

Stage career

Stiles started acting at age eleven, performing with New York's La MaMa Theatre Company, securing work by submitting photographs of herself in costume to the company and asking that she be kept in mind for juvenile roles [6] (http://www.juliastiles.net/theater.html). She graduated to adult roles by performing in Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues and, in the summer of 2002, appeared as Viola, the lead role in Shakespeare in the Park's production of Twelfth Night with Jimmy Smits. Reviewing the production, Ben Brantley of The New York Times saluted Stiles as "the thinking teenagers' movie goddess" who put him in mind of a "young Jane Fonda". In the spring of 2004, she made her London stage debut opposite Aaron Eckhart in a revival of David Mamet's play Oleanna at the Garrick Theatre.

Film career

Stiles' first film was a non-speaking part in I Love You, I Love You Not (1996) with Claire Danes and Jude Law. She also had small roles as Harrison Ford's daughter in Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own (1997) and in M. Night Shyamalan's Wide Awake. Her first lead was in Wicked (1998), playing a teenage girl who murders her mother so she can have her father all to herself. Joe Balthai wrote she was "the darling of the 1998 Sundance Film Festival" and Internet movie writer Harry Knowles said she was the "discovery of the fest," but the film was not commercially released in the U.S. and went direct-to-video.

The role that made her a star 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 Seattle high school. She 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. Adina Hoffman praised her as "a young, serious looking Diane Lane" and Martin Hoyle said Stiles played Kat "with bloody-minded independent charm from the beginning with hints of wistfulness beneath the determination."

Her next starring role was in Down to You, which was heavily panned by critics but was a financial success, and earned Stiles and her co-star Freddie Prinze, Jr. a Teen Choice Award nomination for their on-screen chemistry.

She subsequently appeared in two more Shakespearean adaptations. The first was playing the Desdemona role, opposite Mekhi Phifer in the title role, in Tim Blake Nelson's O (2001), Othello set in a high school. The second was playing Ophelia in Michael Almerayda's Hamlet (2000), with Ethan Hawke in the lead. Neither was a great success; O had been subjected to many delays and a change of distributors and Hamlet was an art house film shot on a minimal budget.

Her next commercial success was in Save the Last Dance (2001), as an aspiring ballerina forced to leave her small town in downstate Illinois to live with her struggling musician father in Chicago after her mother is killed. At her new, nearly all-black school, she falls in love with Sean Patrick Thomas, who teaches her hip-hop dance steps that get her into The Juilliard School. The role won her two more MTV awards for "Best Kiss" and "Best Female Performance", and a Teen Choice Award for best fight scene for her battle with Bianca Lawson. Rolling Stone pronounced her "the coolest co-ed", putting her on the cover of its April 12, 2001 issue. She told Rolling Stone that despite rumors, she did all her own dancing in the film, though the way the film was shot and edited made it appear otherwise.

In David Mamet's State and Main (2000), about a film shooting on location in a small town in Vermont, she played a teenage girl who seduces a film actor (Alec Baldwin) with a weakness for young girls. Stiles also played opposite Stockard Channing in the dark art house film The Business of Strangers (2001) as a conniving underling who exacts revenge on her cold boss. Channing was impressed by her co-star: "In addition to her talent, she has a quality that is almost feral, something that can make people uneasy. She has an effect on people," said Channing. Stiles also had small roles as a CIA operative in The Bourne Identity (2002) and its sequel The Bourne Supremacy (2004). Aimee Agresti quoted producer Lynda Obst as saying Stiles was turning into the next Meryl Streep.

Her next leading role was 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. Stephen Holden referred to her as one of the cinema's "brightest young stars," but the film met with generally unfavorable reviews.

Stiles played a Wisconsin co-ed, with dreams of becoming a doctor, who is swept off her feet by a Danish prince in The Prince and Me (2004), directed by Martha Coolidge. Stiles told Leslie Goober 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 Stiles." This echoed criticism in reviews of A Guy Thing (2003), a romantic comedy with Jason Lee and Selma Blair; Dennis Harvey wrote that Stiles was "wasted," and Stephen Holden called her "a serious actress from whom comedy does not seem to flow naturally."

Television

Stiles' work on television has been more limited. After two appearances on the PBS series Ghostwriter in 1993 and 1994, she appeared as a guest star on the medical drama Chicago Hope. She has been seen in two made-for-TV movies. In Before Women Had Wings (1997) on CBS, she played opposite Ellen Burstyn and Oprah Winfrey in an adaptation of the novel by Connie May Fowler. Marcia Ross, the film's casting director, told Jeffrey Ressner "she projects an intelligent depth, she's not girlish, and she'll easily grow into adult roles."

Stiles also played a teenage girl who finds herself pregnant and runs away from her unforgiving father (Bill Smitrovich) in NBC's miniseries The '60's (1999), a film Caryn James dismissed as "conspicuously idiotic." Stiles was the public face of the film, with NBC using her face, painted with a peace sign and the American flag, both in its advertising and on the cover of the soundtrack album.

On March 17, 2001, Stiles hosted Saturday Night Live and eight days later introduced a music nominee at the 73rd Academy Awards. She returned to Saturday Night Live on May 5 in a cameo as President George W. Bush's daughter Jenna. MTV profiled her in its Diary series in 2003 and she was Punk'd by Ashton Kutcher in the spring of 2004.

Filmography

Year	Movie	Role	Other notes
2006	Burns	Jean Armour	Pre-production
2005	Edmond	Glenna	Filming
2005	Going Down		Announced
2005	A Little Trip to Heaven	Isold	Post-production
2004	The Bourne Supremacy	Nicky
2004	The Prince and Me	Paige Morgan
2003	Mona Lisa Smile	Joan Bandwyn
2003	Carolina	Carolina	Direct to video release in 2005
2003	A Guy Thing	Becky
2002	The Bourne Identity	Nicky
2001	O	Desi Brable
2001	The Business of Strangers	Paula Murphy
2001	Save the Last Dance	Sara Johnson
2000	State and Main	Carla
2000	Hamlet	Ophelia
2000	Down to You	Imogen
1999	10 Things I Hate About You	Katarina "Kat" Stratford
1998	Wide Awake	Neena Beal
1998	Wicked	Ellie Christianson	Direct-to-video
1997	The Devil's Own	Bridget O'Meara
1996	I Love You, I Love You Not	Young Nana's Friend	Silent role

References

• Aimee Agresti. "Type A Student". Premiere. v. 15, n. 12. August 2002. 74-6. (Lynda Obst)
• John Andrews. "Prince Charming isn't her crowning achievement". Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.) April 2, 2004. B5. (The Prince and Me)
• Joe Balthai. "Screen Idol-escents". The Arizona Republic. October 28, 1999. (General material, Sundance)
• John Bankston. Julia Stiles. Bear, Delaware: Mitchell Lane, 2003. (General material; biography for younger readers)
• Ben Brantley. "Wayward Currents in Uncharted Waters". The New York Times. July 22, 2002. (Twelfth Night)
• Jancee Dunn. "Is Julia Stiles too cool for school?". Rolling Stone. Issue 866. April 12, 2001. (General material, college career)
• Alec Foege. "Stiles and Substance". Biography. v. 6, n. 7 July 2002. 74.
• Scott Foundas. "Not a Fresh 'Prince'". Variety. March 29, 2004. 80, 86. (The Prince and Me)
• Leslie Goober. "The Hottest Chicks in Hollywood". Cosmopolitan. v. 231, n.6. December 2001. 192. (General material)
• Dennis Harvey. Review of A Guy Thing. Variety. January 20, 2003.
• Adina Hoffman. "Good teen fun". The Jerusalem Post. July 26, 1999. 7. (10 Things)
• Stephen Holden. "A Hangover Is the Least of His Problems". The New York Times. January 17, 2003. B31. (A Guy Thing)
• Stephen Holden. "Creeping 1953 Feminism Without Quite Dispelling Dreams of Prince Charming". The New York Times. December 19, 2003. B8. (Mona Lisa Smile)
• Martin Hoyle. "Martin Hoyle enjoys a film that turns the Bard's almost unplayable comedy into a teenage coup". Financial Times. July 8, 1999. 18. (10 Things)
• Dave Kehr. "At the Movies: Understanding a Dragon Lady". The New York Times. December 7, 2001. E8. (Stockard Channing and The Business of Strangers)
• Caryn James. "This Time, Man, The 60's Go, Like Faster". The New York Times. February 5, 1999. E30. (The 60's)
• Gia Kourlas. "Julia speaks her mind". Glamour. v. 100, n. 11. January 2003. 92-3, 155. (General material)
• Sarah Partin. "Julia Stiles". In Newsmakers 2002. Detroit, Michigan: Gale, 2002. 415-7. (General material)
• Charlotte O'Sullivan. "Shakespeare goes to the prom". The Independent (London). July 9, 1999. 11. (10 Things)
• Jeffrey Ressner. "10 Things About Her: Julia Stiles' career is a class in teen stardom". Time. v. 153, n. 14. April 12, 1999. (General material, Sundance)
• Jennifer L. Smith. "Julia Stiles gets real". Teen People. v. 7, n. 3. April 2004. 112-5. (General material)
• Julia Stiles. "No one can shut me up". YM. v. 51, n. 2. February 2003. 74-7. (General material)
• Julia Stiles. "Who's afraid of the 1950s?" The Guardian (London). June 17, 2004. [7] (http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1240843,00.html) (Mona Lisa Smile, Oleanna and feminism)

External links

• Official site (http://www.juliastiles.net) (requires Macromedia Flash)
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• Review of Oleanna by The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/story/0,11712,1201708,00.html)de:Julia Stiles

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