Julia Stiles is taking a heartfelt look back at her breakout role in “10 Things I Hate About You” in honor of the movie’s 25th anniversary.
In a Yahoo Entertainment interview published Thursday, Stiles said appearing in the beloved coming-of-age comedy was a “refreshing” experience given the “unapologetic” attitude of her character, Katarina “Kat” Stratford.
“That was my first big movie,” she explained. “I was a 17-year-old auditioning actress. So I’m trying to figure out who I am as a person, and then also getting all this criticism and feedback from the movie industry.”
Prior to appearing in “10 Things I Hate About You,” Stiles had roles in films like “Wicked,” for which she beat out Katie Holmes, and “The Devil’s Own,” starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. Though she had yet to cement herself as a bankable Hollywood commodity at the time of her “10 Things” casting, she’d already felt the sting of sexist criticism and was eager to push back.
“A lot of it was like, ‘You’re too serious,’ ‘You [need to] lighten up.’ You know, trying to be more appealing sexually, whatever,” recalled the actor. “That can be really disheartening, especially as a teenager.”
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Released in 1999, “10 Things I Hate About You” is a teen-centric, Seattle-based retelling of William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.” The movie follows Padua High School student Cameron James (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who finds himself smitten with Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik), one of the school’s most popular girls.
Unfortunately for Cameron, Bianca’s father has forbidden her from dating until Kat, her bookish older sister, does so first. So Cameron enlists the town’s bad boy, Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), to win Kat over.
In what’s become the movie’s most iconic scene, Patrick asks Kat to the prom by performing an impressive rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” Frankie Valli’s 1967 classic, with a marching band. In her chat with Yahoo, Stiles said the scene is one of a few from the film that she still thinks about 25 years later.
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“The stadium scene is pretty memorable for me because I was like, ‘What? Heath Ledger? You can sing and dance and all that?’” she said. “And the scene where I read the poem, actually, because it was really surprising to me. I wasn’t intending to cry that way, but it happened.”
She noted: “I’m totally appreciative of the fact that that movie still means something to people. … To know that other people respond to that movie the same way that I did is really nice.”
Stiles can currently be seen in the film “Chosen Family,” which came out Friday. The romantic comedy was written and directed by Heather Graham, who also stars as its lovesick protagonist.