Julia Stiles is taking a heartfelt look again at her breakout function in “10 Things I Hate About You” in honor of the film’s twenty fifth anniversary.
In a Yahoo Entertainment interview revealed Thursday, Stiles mentioned showing within the beloved coming-of-age comedy was a “refreshing” expertise given the “unapologetic” angle of her character, Katarina “Kat” Stratford.
“That was my first big movie,” she defined. “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.”
Previous to showing in “10 Things I Hate About You,” Stiles had roles in movies like “Wicked,” for which she beat out Katie Holmes, and “The Devil’s Own,” starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. Although she had but to cement herself as a bankable Hollywood commodity on the time of her “10 Things” casting, she’d already felt the sting of sexist criticism and was desirous to push again.
“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.”
Archive Images by way of Getty Pictures
Launched 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 film follows Padua Excessive College pupil Cameron James (performed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who finds himself smitten with Bianca Stratford (Larisa Oleynik), one of many faculty’s hottest women.
Sadly for Cameron, Bianca’s father has forbidden her from courting till Kat, her bookish older sister, does so first. So Cameron enlists the city’s unhealthy boy, Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), to win Kat over.
In what’s develop into the film’s most iconic scene, Patrick asks Kat to the promenade by performing a powerful rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” Frankie Valli’s 1967 traditional, with a marching band. In her chat with Yahoo, Stiles mentioned the scene is one of some from the movie that she nonetheless thinks about 25 years later.
Help Free Journalism
Already contributed? Log in to cover these messages.
“The stadium scene is pretty memorable for me because I was like, ‘What? Heath Ledger? You can sing and dance and all that?’” she mentioned. “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 famous: “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 at the moment be seen within the movie “Chosen Family,” which got here out Friday. The romantic comedy was written and directed by Heather Graham, who additionally stars as its lovesick protagonist.
