Julia Stiles
Julia O'Hara Stiles (born March 28, 1981[1]) is an American actress. Born and raised in New York City, Stiles began acting at the age of 11 as part of New York's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.[2] Her film debut was a small role in I Love You, I Love You Not (1996), followed by a lead role in Wicked (1998) for which she received the Karlovy Vary Film Festival Award for Best Actress. She rose to prominence with leading roles in teen films such as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Down to You (2000), and Save the Last Dance (2001). Her accolades include a Teen Choice Award and two MTV Movie Awards, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe Award, and Primetime Emmy Award.
Julia Stiles
March 28, 1981
Actress
1993–present
3
Stiles added to her list of credits with films such as The Business of Strangers (2001), Mona Lisa Smile (2003), and The Omen (2006), and became known to audiences worldwide with her portrayal of Nicky Parsons in the Bourne franchise (2002–2016). Her other notable film credits include Hamlet, State and Main (both 2000), O (2001), A Guy Thing (2002), Carolina (2003), The Prince & Me (2004), Edmond, A Little Trip to Heaven (both 2005), The Cry of the Owl (2009), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), Out of the Dark (2014), Blackway (2015), 11:55 (2016), Hustlers (2019) and Orphan: First Kill (2022).
Outside of film, Stiles played Lumen Pierce on the fifth season of Dexter (2010), earning nominations for the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actress. From 2012 to 2014 she appeared as the titular character in the web series Blue, for which she earned two IAWTV Awards for Best Actress. From 2017 to 2020 she starred as Georgina Ryland on the Sky Atlantic series Riviera. She currently stars in the Amazon series The Lake (2022–present).
Early life and education[edit]
Stiles was born in New York City[1] to parents Judith Newcomb Stiles, a Greenwich Village artist, and John O'Hara, a businessman. She is the oldest of three children; her siblings are John Junior and Jane (also an actress).[3] Stiles is of English, Irish, and Italian descent.[4] She started acting at age 11, performing with New York's La MaMa Theatre Company.[5]
Career[edit]
Film career[edit]
Stiles's first appearance in a video series was in 1993 in Ghostwriter as Erica Dansby.[6]
Stiles's first film role was in I Love You, I Love You Not (1996), with Claire Danes and Jude Law.[7] She also had small roles as Harrison Ford's character's daughter in Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own (1997) and in M. Night Shyamalan's Wide Awake (1998). Her first lead was in Wicked (1998), playing a teenage girl who might have murdered her mother so she could have her father all to herself. Critic Joe Baltake wrote she was "the darling of the 1998 Sundance Film Festival."[8] She next starred in the TV miniseries The '60s in 1999.[8]
Later that year, she portrayed Kat Stratford, opposite Heath Ledger in Gil Junger's 10 Things I Hate About You, an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew set in a high school in Seattle, Washington. She won an MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Female Performance for the role. The Chicago Film Critics voted her the most promising new actress of the year. Her next starring role was in Down to You (2000), which was panned by critics, but earned both her and her co-star Freddie Prinze, Jr. a Teen Choice Award nomination for their on-screen chemistry. She subsequently appeared in two more Shakespearean adaptations. The first was as Ophelia in Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000), with Ethan Hawke in the lead. The second was in the Desdemona role, opposite Mekhi Phifer, in Tim Blake Nelson's O (2001), a version of Othello set at a boarding school. Neither film was a great success; O was subject to many delays and a change of distributors, and Hamlet was an art house film shot on a minimal budget.
Stiles next commercial success was in Save the Last Dance (2001) as an aspiring ballerina forced to leave her small town in downstate Illinois to live with her struggling musician father in Chicago after her mother dies in a car accident. At her new, nearly all-black school, she falls in love with the character played by Sean Patrick Thomas who teaches her hip-hop dance steps that help get her into the Juilliard School. The role won her two more MTV awards for Best Kiss and Best Female Performance and a Teen Choice Award for best fight scene for her battle with Bianca Lawson. Rolling Stone named her "the coolest co-ed" and put her on the cover of its April 12, 2001, issue.[9] She told Rolling Stone that she performed all her own dancing in the film, except for some closeups of the feet.[9]
Personal life[edit]
Stiles graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English literature in 2005.[45][46] In college, she dated actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the two lived in John Jay Hall.[9] She and actor David Harbour were in a relationship between 2011 and 2015.[47] In 2010, she received a John Jay Award, an honorary award given annually to five alumni by the Columbia College Alumni Association for professional achievements.[48]
Stiles has also worked for Habitat for Humanity, building housing in Costa Rica,[49] and has worked with Amnesty International to raise awareness of the harsh conditions of immigration detention of unaccompanied juveniles. In January 2004, Marie Claire featured Stiles's trip to see conditions at the Berks County Youth Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania.[50][51]
Stiles is a former vegan, occasionally eating red meat.[52] She says she gave up veganism after she developed anemia and found it difficult to get proper nutrition while traveling.[52] She has described herself as a feminist and wrote about the subject in The Guardian.[25]
She is a fan of baseball and the New York Mets.[53] She threw the ceremonial first pitch before their May 29, 2006 game.[54]
In September 2017 Stiles married camera assistant Preston J. Cook with whom she worked on Blackway.[55][56] They have two sons,[57] and one child born in late 2023.[58]