Collegiate Times

Julia stiles

In her jeans and flip-flops, it would have been easy to mistake Julia Stiles for just another college student on campus.

However, Stiles was here for a question and answer session with professor Bob McGrath, someone she has known professionally since she was a child. The session offered cinema and theatre majors the opportunity to pick the award-winning actress’ brain about all aspects of the acting industry.

Stiles met McGrath when she was only 10 years old. The actress sent McGrath, a founder of the Ridge Theater Company in New York City, a letter asking for a part in an upcoming production. McGrath said he remembers the young Stiles was determined to get a part, any part to kickstart her involvement in acting. So he had the writer add a part of a 10-year-old girl in the 1990 production of “The Manson Family.”

Stiles still works with the theatre company that gave her a foothold in the acting community, punctuated with the Hollywood hits she has come to perform in since then.

The interview was modeled like “Inside the Actors Studio,” but with students asking Stiles questions.

McGrath also organized the showing of scenes from Stiles’ famous movies, such as “10 Things I Hate About You,” and “Hamlet.” The students’ questions probed topics ranging from her acting techniques to her preparation routines.

About crying on command, Stiles said, with a laugh, “It’s getting easier and easier to cry, and I don’t know what that means about my life.”

Stiles maintained good humor throughout the Q and A session, and she was given respect in return, with the students minimally prying into her personal life. In fact, the most personal question asked was what Stiles enjoys doing in her free time — hiking and being outdoors.

McGrath began the session somewhat chronologically, screening a scene from an early film.

One of Stiles’ most memorable early roles is her lead part in “10 Things I Hate About You,” a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” Stiles covers her eyes while the clip of her monologue from the end is shown, saying that it makes her “physically uncomfortable to watch myself.”  

Starring opposite Heath Ledger, this film is not Stiles’ only adaptation of a Shakespearian work. Stiles portrayed Desi in the film “O,” or the equivalent Desdemona from “Othello” and Ophelia in a modern version of “Hamlet.”

The clip screened from the movie “Hamlet,” shows a crazed Ophelia after the death of her father, strewing Polaroids standing in for flowers from the original play.

Stiles said the filming at the Guggenheim was under time constraints from the management and the lines were Shakespeare’s but not in iambic pentameter, making for a subpar combination in her opinion.

Stiles continued to pepper the session with anecdotes from the films in which she has taken part. For example, she recounted fainting during one of the “Hamlet” scenes while filming a sequence in a pool during a frigid November in New York.  

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A version of this article appeared in the Sep 10 issue of the Collegiate Times.