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Written by Knight Ridder
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Wednesday, 14 June 2006 |
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There are a lot of great things about being a kid in New York, but Julia Stiles says that when she was growing up in SoHo — where her parents had a pottery business — something many people consider hellish turned out to be a blessing.
“Living on Greene Street, between Grand and Canal streets, we didn’t have a backyard. So I had after-school activities or went to friends’ houses — and the center of what we’d do was watch movies,” says the 25-year-old actress.
“But it was very active TV watching,” Stiles adds, curling her sexy M-shaped lips, made for the movies, into a smile. “My best friend at the time and I would act out whatever characters we were watching on screen. Though, when we watched `Desperately Seeking Susan,’” she says, mock-seriously, “we’d fight over who got to be Madonna.”
Obviously, playing characters clicked with Stiles, who went on to star in “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999), “Save the Last Dance” (2001), “The Bourne Identity” (2002) and “Mona Lisa Smile” (2003). Now she’s raising a kid herself — onscreen, that is — in the creepy remake of “The Omen.”
Except the kid is a little, er, different — he’s Damien, second coming of Lucifer — and the part is a bit of a leap for Stiles.
“I did seem to jump over the ingenue characters and go straight to a `mother’ role,” she says. “It’s weird, because I thought there was a lot of variety to my films, but I became known for teen roles. So now people are saying, `Finally we’re getting to see you in adult roles.’ And that’s really exciting.”
“I never wanted to do a horror film because I didn’t think actors did much in them,” Stiles says.
“And I never want to do anything just for money, because that would be evident in my performance. ... But there’s a scene in the original `Omen’ where Lee Remick seems tortured, and she says she `needs to get help,’ and I liked that. It felt real.
Stiles herself is known to be fearless. At 11 years old, she sent a letter to New York’s Ridge Theater Company, asking for an audition. She got one, which began a minicareer with the La Mama Experimental Theater Club in the East Village, as well as with the Kitchen Theater company.
She attended Friends Seminary school on Manhattan’s East Side, and graduated from the Professional Children’s School. By 18, she had broken into film, opposite Heath Ledger in “10 Things.”
In 2001, Stiles entered Columbia University, majoring in English. But unlike some starlets who give college a shot but quickly return to their careers, Stiles actually received her bachelor of arts degree in May 2005, doing schoolwork around filming the spy sequel “The Bourne Supremacy,” the romantic comedy “A Guy Thing,” “Mona Lisa Smile” and the Cinderella tale “The Prince & Me.”
She also performed on stage in New York (“Twelfth Night”) and in London (“Oleanna”).
“I did a lot of classwork my last two semesters — I took six classes during each,” she says. “But I just knew that I didn’t want to be 40 and not have a degree.
“I had also started school when `Save the Last Dance’ came out, and everybody brought that up in interviews, so it would have looked really bad if I didn’t finish!” she laughs. “But I also thought I needed to live up to something, because of my public persona. I set standards for myself, and didn’t want to cut corners. And going to college was really helpful in that it gave me time to grow up into older roles.”
Now that she’s battled the Devil’s own in “The Omen,” Stiles is off to Europe to film the third “Bourne” film with Matt Damon (“The Bourne Ultimatum”), and then she’ll take on more responsibility: starring in and producing a film of Sylvia Plath’s novel “The Bell Jar,” a project she’s been shepherding along for some time.
“I laugh sometimes when I get an interesting script, because I look for the female character, and she’ll have a few lines, a sex scene — and then she’s out,” Stiles says. “I thought I’d always have to wait for good projects to come along. But `The Bell Jar’ is a book I really love, and now I have the power to do it. It’s just a matter of thinking, `I can do that.’”
It’s a challenge Stiles knows she’ll be able to handle — thanks, in part, to her big-city upbringing.
“A New York actor’s reaction to something in a script might be more combative than others,” she says. “And because you meet people from all walks of life in New York, if you get a script about something you know nothing about, you can easily imagine the character, because you’ve likely seen them, or crossed paths with them.” | Only registered users can write comments.
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I am a recent college graduate of Minnesota State University Moorhead. After recieving my B.A. in English and Mass Communications this past August I moved down to Colorado.
I enjoy long walks on the beach, candlelight dinners, and heavy metal. My hobbies include reading and writing, music, movies, and getting drunk. Some of my favorite contemporary authors include Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Kurt Vonnegut. My top movies are anything directed by Kubrick. I enjoy listening to anything that rocks.
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|  | Ms. Giles currently lives in Colorado where she stars in her own private reality show. She writes aphoristic accounts of her life, taken completely out of context, and embellished with characters and situations disguised to resemble something close to interesting. | |
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| | My name is Michelle Turley and I'm 28 years old. I live in Severance with my hubbie, Brandon. We have 2 dogs and a cat. We enjoy camping, four-wheeling, and just being in the mountains. I like to cook, clean (go figure), flea market, and play poker. I have so much to say about poker... | |
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