Julia Stiles

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source for all ^ hollywoodsbest

[MissMagAddict]

A woman possessed
(Filed: 04/06/2006) source: telepgraph.co.uk


Composed and clear-headed, her manners as impeccable as her looks, Julia Stiles seems every inch Hollywood's queen of cool. But her latest role has her running scared. Susan Dominus finds out why
When I found Julia Stiles seated in the dark, oaky restaurant of the Manhattan hotel where we'd arranged to meet, I was only five minutes late, but she was already nervously dialling her mobile phone, evidently making enquiries about my whereabouts.
‘Better to be that Shakespeare girl than that horror-film girl’It turned out, however, that she'd reached for the phone not in anger, as I'd feared, but rather in an effort to escape the conversation she'd been having with the crazy woman seated at the table next to hers, who continued to rant in Stiles's direction even as the actress extricated herself from the table. 'And it's so expensive!' the woman, shrunken and wildly lipsticked, was complaining about the restaurant.
'I don't think more so than any other restaurant in the area,' Stiles responded politely, using the same tone she'd clearly been employing patiently for the past ten minutes. Your average New Yorker would have long since reverted to icy and uninterested, but Stiles, blonde and clear-skinned, somehow seemed too well-bred for that.
Only once she's out in the fresh air of Park Avenue on this warm spring day does Stiles allow for a little annoyance. 'I mean, some day that lady's gotta learn, you're never going to find the perfect caesar salad.'
For a fully fledged Hollywood star - she was reportedly paid $2 million for her role as a CIA agent in The Bourne Supremacy - Stiles seems unusually comfortable with imperfections of all kinds. First, the restaurant fiasco; now, on the street, she appears to be walking with a slight limp - even film stars, it turns out, sometimes lose the plastic nub on one of their sandals' heels at inconvenient moments. And yet she seems neither frustrated nor distracted, but rather, unflappable.
Stiles doesn't do giggly and jejune, in real life or in the roles she chooses; for the most part, she does smart and serious, earning rave reviews for her West End debut in David Mamet's Oleanna in 2004, for her portrayal of the brainy would-be hausfrau in the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile, and for her roles in three clever, youthful Shakespeare film adaptations: Hamlet, O (Othello), and 10 Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew). 'Better to be that Shakespeare girl than that horror-film girl,' she said at the time, when an interviewer asked if she feared being typecast as a modern-day Bard-girl.
Sleeping with the enemy: Stiles thought hard before accepting the role as the devil's mother in The OmenAnd yet, if the producers of her latest film, a remake of The Omen, have their way, Stiles, now all of 25, will soon be known as the horror-film girl of the year. Stiles takes on the role played by Lee Remick in the 1976 original: a young woman who marries well but turns out, to her misfortune and everyone else's, to be the mother of the antichrist.
It's a film rife with vertiginous death falls and blood-chilling screams. For various reasons, Stiles thought hard about taking on the role, among them the fear that the part would, in fact, strike too resonant a chord. 'It would be weird to be known as the mother of the devil,' she says.
And then there's the problem of horror movie monotony. 'I like watching horror films, but actors never get to do anything interesting in them - they're just scared all the time,' she says. Ultimately, she took the part because she found this particular role's psychological complexity irresistible: it's not every day that a young beauty who starts out with everything gets to fall apart tragically on film (look what wonders such a part did for Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby). 'She's not able to bond with her son, but she feels guilty about it and it ends up eating away at her,' Stiles says of her own part. 'And because her husband pushes everything under the rug, she goes crazy, and becomes really bitter and mean.'
Making the film, she says, proved a bit of a trial - she had no problems with the director or her fellow actors, but the subject matter gave her insomnia. 'I was unwittingly getting into the feel of the movie, or the role,' she says. 'My character says, "Whenever I close my eyes, I see grotesque images."' It didn't help that Mia Farrow, who plays the antichrist's devil-worshipping nanny, shared with Stiles stories of creepy happenings on the set of Rosemary's Baby.
'When the actors had to shout, "Hhh…", Stiles stops herself. 'I can't even say it.' She regroups then lowers her voice, 'They would say, "Hail Satan," but some actors refrained from saying that, and others didn't, and the people who didn't refrain, really bad things happened to them.' Farrow, apparently, did not refrain, 'and that was the year she got divorced from André Previn,' Stiles says. 'Or something like that.'
Stiles and Farrow eventually devised a technique for getting through the eeriest of The Omen's eerie scenes. 'It was kind of corny, but in the scene where I die, the two of us would say, "This is just a movie, we're just putting it out there that this is fiction, no intended badness..." It was like a prayer - it was so silly, but it made us feel better.'
Back in the spring sunshine of New York all that darkness seems forgotten, and Stiles seems cool, at ease, at home. Stiles is a New Yorker, born and bred. Her father is a teacher, her mother a potter, and she grew up, the eldest of three children, in SoHo. In her early teens she spent her free time working with the local - and highly acclaimed - experimental theatre group La MaMa.
Later on she found an agent and made her debut, aged 15, in a non-speaking role in I Love You, I Love You Not (1996) alongside Jude Law and Claire Danes. She had bit parts on television and in a handful of films before she made her breakthrough in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). That year she enrolled at Columbia University, to read English, but continued to work as an actress and only graduated last year.
While at Columbia she found time to learn karate and play centre forward in a women's football team; she also endured minor embarrassments such as having to stroll past her classmates while she was dressed for the red carpet, a limousine waiting for her at the campus gate.
Stiles is happy to talk about such things, but has also learnt to be careful. Several times she mentions seemingly innocuous details about her parents, only to ask a moment later that they be expunged from the record. 'It's always uncomfortable to read about yourself in a conversation you weren't there for,' she explains. 'I've started to realise how much I stick my foot in my mouth.'
And she won't tell me much about her boyfriend, except that he's a bit older, a successful painter and sculptor and 'a wonderful man'. (In fact, she is going out with the painter Jonathan Cramer, who used to date Sophie Dahl and was recently dubbed New York's 'sexiest artist' by New York Magazine.) To say any more, she says thoughtfully enough, would 'cheapen it a little bit. I mean,' she goes on, 'this is like normal conversation, but it's also to promote a film - I would never want something that's precious and wonderful to be used to promote a film.'
She is aware that there are benefits to just those kinds of exploitations, or to more visible breakups and blow-outs. 'Bad behaviour is rewarded in Hollywood,' she says. 'Everyone you see on the cover of tabloids - those are the most consistently working actors today. Maybe they're just having a moment, but audiences are attracted to that.'
The afternoon sun is surprisingly hot for spring, and Stiles heads back towards the hotel, where a car should be waiting for her. A gangly man in a gardener's jump suit stops her and points. 'Wait a second… aren't you…? I know you…' He smiles, like he's on Candid Camera. 'What's your name?' he asks. It's bad enough to be stopped by a fan who recognises you; it's another thing to be interrogated by someone who doesn't exactly recognise you. But Stiles obliges anyway, giving him an autograph and smiling sweetly.
By now she'd really like the car to show up, and it's not clear where it is. She calls the driver again. 'Hi, it's Julia, I'm sorry to be stalking you.' Just as she nears the corner where he should be, she stops in her tracks. 'Oh, no,' she says. 'I think a bird just…'
One can barely look, but it's true, there in her golden hair is the evidence that a bird has chosen to relieve itself directly overhead. It's good luck, they say, if you believe in such things. Assurances are made that this won't be mentioned in the piece. 'Oh, you can,' she says breezily. After all, such omens aside, Stiles is a practical princess, and it will take more than a bird with good aim to shake her off her throne.

[anastars]

Julia Stiles @ Swarovski Private Dinner to Honor the 2006 CFDA Nominees 06/04/06 - x3


hollywoodsbest

[cosmogrl5]

Julia Stiles & Moby at the screening of Who Killed The Electric Car (06/26/2006) Source: gossiprocks


Her face is looking a little oily there. I love Julia, but she looks thrown together there.

[style_savy]

Julia Stiles @ Hugo Boss Roof Garden Party, July 25
hollywoodsbest.net

[daddyslittlegrl8]

^She looks really blond in these pics. I love her hair though

dlg

[style_savy]

Julia Stiles @ HUGO BOSS and Interview Magazine party (august 2, 2006)
hollywoodsbest.net

[loves]

i find her so plain looking

however for the first time, the post above #53, she looks fantastic, mysterious like a hitchcock heroine.

[MaPommeCherie]

Harper's Bazaar May 2005 (my scans)

[ShoeGal4Eva]

i prefer her with short hair