26 years have passed since Julia Stiles had ’90s teens bawling at the emotional delivery of her poem to Patrick (played by the late and great Heath Ledger) in 10 Things I Hate About You. It’s the moment we all knew we’d be seeing a lot more of her, and we certainly did.
She went on to woo fans—and apparently Juilliard—with her mix of hip hop and ballet dancing in Save The Last Dance (although most of us look back at this scene with a different set of eyes now that we’re older).
Then came roles in the Bourne series, Mona Lisa Smile, A Guy Thing, and The Prince and Me. Yet no matter how different all these characters’ backstories were, Stiles made a point of playing headstrong, intelligent, complex women who weren’t afraid to speak their minds or spit out sassy one-liners. As the Irish Independent put it, “Julia Stiles was the ‘thinking teen’s’ poster girl of the 1990s,” and indeed she was.
She made an entire generation of teenage girls and young women feel seen and represented on screen. But as frenetic as her career started, it began to slow down when Stiles pushed back against the fame by enrolling at Columbia University. Sure, she was still acting during her breaks, but she chose to prioritise education, much like her characters Kat Stratford or Paige Morgan.
Though if you check her acting credits on sites like IMDB, you’ll realise that Julia never actually stopped acting. Her roles just shifted from leading lady to supporting characters in independent films and television series.
Then, in 2017, Julia Stiles’ life changed again. She gave birth to a son, Strummer Newcomb Cook, followed by Arlo in 2022 and a third child in late 2023/early 2024. Stiles told The View that raising children with her husband, Preston J. Cook, prepared her for the jump from the front of the camera to the director’s chair.
Stiles also leaned into her rom-com roots for her turn behind the camera, Wish You Were Here. The indie film, which follows the romance between a young woman (Isabelle Fuhrman) and a man she finds out is terminally sick (Mena Massoud), was released in January this year (2025).
While the actress may not appear in many major productions anymore, she is still proud of her early work in films like 10 Things. She was (and continues to be) grateful to have been given the opportunity to play Kat: “I thought it was so refreshing, seeing a teenage girl be feisty and opinionated and be a fish out of water, but proudly,” she told InStyle back in 2019. It’s a role that’s definitely held its own with time, and one we can’t picture anyone else but the incredibly talented Julia Stiles in.
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