Julia talks about A Guy Thing, Carolina, her production deal, college, Shakespeare in the Park, Bill Murray and a few other things. Worth a read. Fairly recent interview.

Enjoy,
wickedvapor

Premiere: Either you have really understanding professors or you like torturing yourself. How do you make movies and go to college simultaneously? Didn't making A Guy Thing overlap with your school schedule?

Julia Stiles: Yeah, I had to come home [from the Vancouver set] because my spring semester started, and then I'd go back to shoot on the weekends. Thank God it was only two weekends, but it was rough. The last weekend, we worked all night. I didn't sleep, and then I got on a plane and came back to school. It was pretty painful. I even skipped class.

Premiere: I heard that you and Jason Lee sang South Park songs to stay awake during those all-night shoots.

Julia Stiles: All he had to do was start singing "Uncle Fucka"-pardon my French-and I would crack up. Jason and I had all these running gags, and the best thing is, I stole all his jokes and came back to college and was the funniest girl on campus. Nobody knows that Jason Lee really originated them.

Premiere: You're busy holding down two jobs, actress and student; meanwhile, your character, Becky, has no ambition whatsoever.

Julia Stiles: That's what's so refreshing about her. She's very carefree. If I didn't have the rest of the world making me feel more driven, then I'd be as free-spirited as Becky. She's the opposite of my type A personality.

Premiere: Where does that pressure come from?

Julia Stiles: It's not so much that I put pressure on myself; it's that I want to work hard at something that's going to make me feel good. I was just thinking about this because I've been really happy about how I'm going to spend my summer doing Shakespeare in the Park.

Premiere: What are you most excited about: the cross-dressing, the swordplay, or the iambic pentameter?

Julia Stiles: Oh, everything! I walked around Central Park yesterday and went to look at the theater. I've done a lot of stage, but it was very experimental and small. This stage is massive, and it's such a different kind of acting. I saw that when I auditioned.

Premiere: You appeared in three Shakespeare movies and you had to audition?

Julia Stiles: Oh, of course! Twice. And I didn't have a problem with that at all. This is sooooo different. First of all, the language: In Hamlet I had to speak the old language, but this is a much more traditional version. And then, being a film actress, you can get into the habit of just acting with your face, and onstage you have to act with your body.

Premiere: You should talk to someone at school about getting extra credit.

Julia Stiles: I know. Actually, I was thinking I might try to do that, but I sort of feel timid asking. Ironically, my Shakespeare professor said that the worst paper I wrote was on Twelfth Night.

Premiere: I read about your signing on to do Shakespeare in the Park in the gossip pages, and I realized I never see any wild college escapades in there. Do you not have any fun, or do you just not get caught?

Julia Stiles: I have my fair share of fun. But one time I was really shocked because I ended up in a column for something that wasn't even true. It was like, "She was dancing on a table at a club!" and my grandmother called me and was like, "What were you doing?"

Premiere: I heard that Bill Murray [who played Polonius to Stiles's Ophelia in Hamlet] gave you some advice to not take the business too seriously.

Julia Stiles: Yeah, you know those moments that you'll take with you for the rest of your life? Before Hamlet, he took me to the Hungarian Pastry Shop, which is right over there [points]. It was right when I was applying to colleges, so it made me look at Columbia more heavily. He said that the interests he had outside of work were still important to him. He lives by his own standards, and I hope to imitate that. That's why I'm going to school, and I try to do other things. As much as I love acting, if it's the only thing in your life, it'll start controlling you.

Premiere: Are there people whose careers you would like to emulate?

Julia Stiles: I love Cate Blanchett. I don't recognize her in every movie. She's so different in the way she speaks, in the way she moves, in the way she looks. She makes really daring choices too. And the great thing is that you don't read that much about her personal life. I think that makes her a better actress because, when you see her onscreen, you don't have this preconceived idea of her identity.

Premiere: Do you hope to keep your personal info to a minimum like that?

Julia Stiles: Yeah. Kevin Kline, another one of my favorite actors, does that, too. I've watched him very carefully, and he won't talk a lot about himself. Stories just become so exaggerated.

Premiere: In your next film, Carolina, you play a small-town girl embarrassed by her family, especially an eccentric grandmother played by Shirley MacLaine. Were you intimidated working with her?

Julia Stiles: I wasn't so much intimidated as reverential, like, "I understand that I'm so much more inexperienced than you are, and I want to learn everything I can from you." And that's where I was really impressionable-like, she would tell her reincarnation stories, and I'd be like, "Yeah! You're so right! Oh my God!" But she's incredible; she is such a presence.

Premiere: Some of your recent choices, like The Business of Strangers, make me wonder if you might be looking to shake your teen audience.

Julia Stiles: Not at all. I would be stupid, first of all, because that's what's letting me work and express myself. I've been lucky to do teen movies that I still think are good-with all due respect to other actors. I don't feel like I'm compromising anything.

Premiere: A few months ago, you signed a producing deal. What types of projects are you looking to make?

Julia (or someone who claims to be Julia) has an MTV profile!!U can message her (if it really is her) directly. heres a link 2 her profile http://www.mtv.com/community/profiles/profile.jhtml?username=Julia_Stiles_NY

IMDb.com has elected 10 Things I hate about you as their "IMDB Movie of the day", making a list of 10 reasons to watch it. #4 reading

4) Julia Stiles, who as forbidding riot grrl Kat Stratford mines her character's bitterness and anger to depths usually unknown in teen films, but still makes her endearing and sympathetic;

Way to go!

Taken from People Magazine- October 28,2002
Page 49- insider by Tom Cunneff

Justice is blind- even when it involves parking tickets and Hollywood
celebs. Kirsten Dunst and Julia Stiles learned that the hard way recently.
The two actresses, currently shooting the
drama Mona Lisa’s* Smile in Wellesley,
Mass., decided to drive into Boston for a late showing of The Banger Sisters. When they emerged from the theater, they discovered that Stiles’s car had been towed by the police. Although she had parked legally at the time, it was after midnight when the movie let out, meaning the space had become an illegal spot literally overnight. Says Stiles, who paid a
hefty fine to recover her vehicle: “Parking in Boston is really complicated.”

*Interesting they say Lisa’s, not Lisa. Journalism these days.

And while I am at it, what would you rather we fixate on, parking tickets or panties? Surely the former! But I find your comments regarding narcotics and ostrich lighting most disturbing and wonder if you are fully in your right mind. I am not interested in a your Story Worthy of Print, or in your Vexatious Progress, and certainly I want none of your Blueberry Syrup. Touche.

Steep of the Deep.

[This message has been edited by steep (edited November 17, 2002).]

Something, I came across....supposedly, Sept. 2002...here's the interview

quote:

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...Julia Stiles: 'That'll sound slutty'
Cowardly studios; 'Spider-Man'; September 11 - rising star Julia Stiles has an opinion about almost everything. But, as Charlotte O'Sullivan discovers, she's more than a big mouth
13 September 2002

Julia Stiles looks like Tweety Pie, all big blonde head and cute, pursed mouth. But personality-wise, the 21-year-old New Yorker seems closer to Sylvester, Tweety's arch foe. Which is to say, more the type to chew 'n' spit out innocence than twitter sweetly in a cage.

Maybe it's that combination of light and dark that keeps you glued to her face. Last year, she scored a massive hit in the States with the inter-racial love story Save The Last Dance; and received good reviews in art-house fare like Hamlet and State and Main. But it's the fine teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You, and vicious revenge drama, The Business of Strangers, which show off her peculiar charm best. And now there's O (released today), a meaty updating of Othello set in a Southern, sports-obsessed high school, in which she plays Desi (Desdemona) to Mekhi Phifer's basketball champ, Odin (Othello). The film's got most attention for its bloody finale, which ? in light of the Columbine massacre, and a series of shootings that followed ? got it put on the shelf for two years. Yet it's Stiles's scenes with Phifer (the intimate love-making that turns into a rape; Desi's grief in the face of Odin's growing paranoia) that make your head spin.

Stiles begins the interview by taking out her gum and pressing it into a wad of hotel paper, ("Sorry, right, I'm listening now"). She thinks it's crazy the film almost didn't get a release ? "the more you keep those kids in the dark, the more they're going to want to shoot each other." She certainly doesn't think that the violence at the end is over the top and feels the distribution company made things worse: "They were so afraid that the media were going to say we were exploiting current events, that they delayed the release, so then the media played up the controversy even more."

She says that for a while, Miramax and the distribution company "kept thinking that they were going to have the ending changed. Luckily, this was basically an indie movie that just sort of grew big. If it had been a studio film they'd have reshot the ending," she pulls a face, "so that they all lived happily ever after."

Stiles thinks much about the movie business is dumb. "They do so much studio testing, I think that just screws with any artistic purpose." She tosses back her hair (newly bobbed). "Did you see Down To You?" (a teen romance she made in 2000 with Freddie Prinze Jr). She sticks her finger down her throat in a pantomime vomit. "They added a different ending, and added stuff where we talk into camera. It was ridiculous."

The thing about Stiles is that she has a Plan B. She has always written (at 16, she was invited into the Sundance Writer's Lab). She's also studying literature full-time at Columbia University ? she's got another two years to go ? and has been getting zippy grades all the way. She likes being "rewarded" for expressing her ideas well. She says that in the back of her head, "I constantly feel like I need to be doing something". Her mother (half English, half Italian) makes ceramic pots, her dad (Irish) sells them ? and Stiles admits that the basic ethos is, "it's bad to be lazy! If I decided not to go to college [my parents] would not be that happy."

She mentions her granny at one point (who was miffed that Desdemona gets strangled in the film, rather than suffocated, as in the play) and when I say that I've noticed she often mentions her granny in interviews, Stiles throws her head down and blushes. "I talk about her all the time, I don't know why. Maybe it's because she took me to see Three Sisters when I was nine." Aged 50, her granny (her mother's mother) stopped being a housewife and started a career in journalism, working for The Nation and NBC. What inspired this radical life-style change? "Her divorce."

Stiles, as you'd expect, is withering about her snowballing fame, and the fact that she now has to wear a baseball cap when she's in New York, "or people will stare at me". And yet, I say, she auditioned for the part of Mary Jane in Spider-Man. If fame's the aspect of acting she likes least... Stiles finishes the sentence for me. "It doesn't make sense, does it?" Another pensive frowning session. "I mean, I like Sam..." She pauses, "is it Raimi?" I nod, trying to suppress a smile. "Yeah, I like his work." Another pause. "But I went into that audition a little half-assed. I mean, there's no love lost there. I mean the money... it would be cash up the wazoo. And that was definitely the temptation. To be honest, it was my agent saying you should go in ? with all due respect to the people who worked on that movie ? my agent said you can make a lot of money and they tried to convince me. I was like, 'Oh, alright, I'll go meet them'. And then," shrug, "it turned into this stupid thing."

As in her performances, it's Stiles's brittleness that's endearing. There's the same mixture of defiance and diffidence when I ask why we couldn't take photos of her for this interview. "They said that?" As if flicking through revision notes, she murmurs, "Why? Why would they do that?" The answer comes to her, "Well, they can control it better. God forbid that I'd have a bad picture of me printed in a magazine, I might never work again. It's true!" she giggles, "that's what it is. That's what they'd say. It protects me, but I hate..." She restarts the sentence, "It's not my fault. I wish people were a little less critical of the way actresses look."

Today, she's dressed in a short skirt and wearing long, high-heeled, red suede boots. She's got a crucifix round her neck and when she sees me looking at it she brightens. "It's plastic. It's an ode to Madonna and actually, my dog chewed it. It's really bad, I let my dog chew on Jesus Christ's feet!"

She boasts, "I'm like of a generation of kids that don't know what to believe in, so we don't believe anything at all." She's on a roll. She says she's proud to be a New Yorker, "but not overly proud". America's reaction to the September 11 attacks struck her as "so ironic". She takes a sip from her diet Pepsi. "It's like we're saying, Oh a jihad... Actually, we don't know even know what the word 'jihad' means, but people say, 'Oh right, they're fighting a jihad. Wait, I've got to go to church and worship Jesus Christ'."

Her honesty is impressive, (and I'm sure has caused her problems back home). But just as you're thinking she's really and truly as tough as she sounds, something else pops out. She notes that in America, "it matters so much if a girl is pure or slutty. That was something I was really worried about in relation to Desi. I didn't want the audience to think she was slutty. I felt so uncomfortable about that line where she tells Odin: I'll do anything for you. I kept saying to the director 'That's going to sound slutty. Couldn't I say: I love you?'"

It makes a strange kind of sense when she says one of her favourite ever scenes involves Natalie Wood in Splendor In The Grass , Elia Kazan's brilliant study of teen mores (Wood's character, initially the ideal high-school girl, ends up having a breakdown). "It's that scene in the bathtub," says Stiles, "where she's screaming, 'I'm not spoiled! I'm not spoiled!' cos her mother is so preoccupied with whether or not she is virginal or slutty. I was floored by that."

Stiles comes from a long line of thoroughly modern millies, yet something about her desire for approval, her need to meet the highest of standards (whether her own, or her family's) feels old-fashioned. There's something about Natalie Wood that's so frail, I say. Stiles plucks at one of her red boots, and says, "It's funny, I guess it's her frailty that I like."

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Got this from http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/interviews/story.jsp?story=332727

Of the four messages you have posted on this forum, at least two of them have been complaints/moans/insults etc. Any chance you could liven up a bit, quit the hassling and enjoy the Forum as much as everyone else here? That would be great. Thanks

All the Best
Danny

quote:

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Originally posted by Jason Whyte:
Here's our third go at it!

Instructions and Rules of Offical News Thread

This thread is for all forum members to use for breaking Julia news. If you find a picture that j-s.com doesn't have, or if you caught a newsbit somewhere we don't have, release news, etc, as long as the source is accurate, go ahead and post.

When doing so, please post all the necessary information, the source and original URL of the website.

This thread is NOT for Julia gossip, "I heard's" and rumours, and not for asking irrelevant questions. Discussion of news is permitted, but please don't reply with pointless messages like the last news threads ("I think this thread is a great idea!", "Will someone find some news?") and PLEASE keep on topic!

Any questions? Feel free to shoot me an email with any queries or concerns.

Have fun!

Regards,

Jason

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Those are the rules and guidelines set for this thread at the beginning by Jason. Any off-topic discussion will be deleted without warning. This thread is meant to be a quick read so that anyone can come in, get some news, and then talk about that news if need be. Thanks, and let the news fly!

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"The greatest thing you will ever learn; is just to love, and be loved in return."

Blessed Be,
Barry M.

quote:

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MUCH ADO ABOUT A 'DO

Julia Stiles, who dyed her hair black for the film The Business of Strangers, says in the January issue of Glamour that "It made me feel tougher. Getting the color out was another matter. My hair turned brown, orange, then blonde. It was practically falling out."

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I know the feeling, I tried to go from brown to blonde myself. I got to orange than decided to shave it off instead. Go figure.

Needless to say, the picture is very hot and I can't wait to get the pictures in color..

Fixed the ubb codes for you, think there was some HTML in here as well (such as [title]) which doesn't work on this board, only UBB code. Thanks for the news! Read you later!

quote:

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..."JULIA SPEAKS HER MIND...and what a mind she has! Here, life and career musts from one of hollywood's hottest actresses, who also happens to ba feminist and a Shakespeare fan. Just don't ask her to microwave popcorn. by Gia KOurlas Photos by Mark Abrahams...
...Julia Stiles has one Jam-packed day planner. Want proof? There's her job--playing such bigscreen roles as Hamlet's Ophelia and a hip-hop dancer. There's her volunteer work for the 9/11 charitey FAmilies of Freedom. Then there's the Enlglish degree she's pursuing at Columbia University. And Stiles is only 21. This month, to play a hula dancer/tollbooth operator/record-store clerk in AGUY THING, Stiles sacrificed all her vanity for laughs. STill, she says, "making a fool of yourself is sometimes considered the oppostite of bieng sexy. But in my book, it's really not." Here, from the set of her upcoming filmMona Lisa Smile, the unjmistakably silly, sexy actress gives glamour her own Dos and Don'ts.
"Do take chances. I wanted to do A GUY THING to try comedy. When I read the script my character was just the token girl. The director and I met a lot about how to make her funny. We came up with the idea that she has weird odd jobs--and that she's not very good at any of them. But she can still laugh, she's real, and her sexiness is natural."
"Don't have expectations when dating. When I'm spending time with my boyfriend, who's also a junior at Columbia, sometimes there's too much of an expectation of [having fun] when we're planning to have dinner or go dancing. The better moments are when we have nothing planned. Lounging on a Sunday afternoon is nicer that going to a big event. Also, Don't put on airs during intitial dates. Even if he buys into youf ront, he'll eventually disover that you're a different person."
Do exercises that make you feel good. I used to stick to a workout regimen, thinking, I have to do this and I have to do that. NOw my workouts vary according to what I think will make me feel better that day. If I have a lot of energy to expend, I'll go running or take a long walk in the park. If I need to relax and calm my mind, I'll do yoga. I find working out more rewarding now."
Do be a feminist. Fo a book presentation I had to do in philosophy class, I chose TOWARD A FEMINST THEORY OF THE STATEby Catharine MacKinnon because I knew it would be [a challenge]to get a classroom half full of men to listem to me--I figured they'd comein prejudiced against the word feminism. I was careful not to alienate the men and to make them understand that a lot of feminists love men. Even so, at the end of the two-hour class, some guy commented about MacKinnon, 'Well, I mean, of course she hates men-she's a feminist.'"
Do cut your own hair. I've always wanted short hair, so when I finished filming A GUY THING , I just stated chopping away at myself. Ir eally likd what I did! It was a mild rebllion, I think, just to see what movie people would say. If I weren't working right now, my agents probably wouldn't have been so understanding."
Do load up at the drugstore. I buy my own shampoo and stuff. The best beauty product is TEnd Skin--it's an aftershave, but you can put it on your zitz and it clears them up. The best thing about working on a Julia Roberts movie[Mona Lisa Smile], though, is that companies send you all this free stuff. So I'm stocking up, and when I'm back at scool, I can use my old freebies,"
Do read Shakespeare. The thing I lobe about Shakespeare is that he uses alot of words to describe one thing. Each word gives me a clue about my character. It's like excavating. In modern moviemaking, you invent a character from a script. but Shakespeare's done all the work; you hust have to pick apart what he's written."
Don't take long showers if you live in a dorm. Last year, we had one shower for seven people--I was always last to shower. Do your Dishes.and Don't make microwave popcorn. I almost burned my dorm down--it was mortifying. Smoke filled the hallways, and everyone was screaming, 'What's on fire?' I imagined everybody piling downstairs, going, 'Julia Stiles did it.' Buyt that didn't happen."
Do seek out inspiration. I've been renting classic movies. They remind me how good movies can be and make me want to work harder. If I neen inspiration, I listen to musicians I admire, like Ani DiFranco."
Do listen. Ironically, my favorite quality about myself--that I listen really well--is also my least favorite quality. It gets me into trouble. I accept input from too many different people. So a lot of times, it just leabes me confused."
Dont' kick and scream if you want some. It won't get you anywhere. It's challenging to imagine another person's perspective--think about how to make an argument and win the person ober. Always maintain you individuality. And in the immortal words of Madonna, Do express yourself".

...Julia tells..."how I made myself over"
MonaLisaSmile"We were trying for a grace kelly look. I wore a girdle, pantyhose and a slip! At first I thought it was restrictive, not sexy. but after I got used to it, I felt sexier, classier and more feminine."
AGUYTHING "I did a lot of sit-ups befor this scene. My trainger kicked my butt so much that I couldn't do anything for the rest of the day. That's when I learned not to kill myself working out."
THEBUSINESSOFSTRANGERS...see my last post about the hair....
SAVETHELASTDANCE "During preproduction for this movie, I took ballet, hip-hop and Pilates classes. Here, I was trying to imitate Baby from DIRTYDANCING--only in an urban hip-hop kind of way."

...Julia friends tell what she's really like:
"Julia's not about being some flirty you thing. She's not your typical cheesecake pinup girl. She's beautiful and talented and has the mouth of a truck driver when necessary."-Selma Blair, costar, AGUYTHING
"She's really got her brain on."-Maggie Gyllenhaal, costar MONALISASMILE
"Julia's a brave, grounded, normal person. When we were shooting SAVETHELASTDANCE in a Chicago school, often she really was the only white girl in the building. She knew what she had to do, and she got the job done."-KerryWashington, costar
"She was a little shy at first, but within two weeks, Julia and [costar]Jason Lee were singing SouthPark songs together."-Chris Koch, director, AGUYTHING

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Photo descriptions:cover,Jeans, Paper Denim&Cloth:top, Dolce&Gabbana[pink]. inside, Halter, Prada[red].
and four shots from MONALISASMILE, AGUYTHING, THEBUSINESSOFSTRANGERS, AND SAVETHELASTDANCE.

Just to mention...as Julia mentions, she does have a boyfriend..so that lesbian thing should be thrown out the window...and I'll try to get the pictures in...I've checked out Glamour..but they haven't posted it yet..

When I edited your post I just fixed the codes you used to quote, bold, italicize, etc. No text was removed from your post with the exception of all those extra periods. "....." can usually be supplemented by a well placed comma or new sentance. Thanks for the news, Read you later!

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"The greatest thing you will ever learn; is just to love, and be loved in return."

Enjoy!

Actress Julia Stiles.

Fri Jan 10 04:30P MTVE- MTV
Sat Jan 11 09:30A MTVE- MTV
Sun Jan 12 10:00A MTVE- MTV
Wed Jan 15 02:00P MTVE- MTV
Thu Jan 16 06:00P MTVE- MTV

More at http://www.tv-now.com/stars/jstiles.html

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"God will never give you more than you can handle." - Kelly Clarkson

Julia's Leno appearance may be cancelled, because of a conflict with her Mona Lisa Smile shooting schedule.

On the morning of the 17th, she will appear on Good Morning America and Regis & Kelly.

Apparently, there's talk of her appearing on the Best Damn Sports Show, but that's still under consideration or something.

Because of her rigorous Mona Lisa Smile schedule, press commitments thus far have been light.

I'll let you know more when I hear it.

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Ezra Moses Galston

Owner of Julia-Stiles.com -- ezramoses@julia-stiles.com

"Pussies Unite!"
-Julia Stiles, The Vagina Monologues

LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG KILBORN, CBS
Thu 1/16: Julia Stiles
&
THE CAROLINE RHEA SHOW, syndicated
Fri 1/17: Julia Stiles, Jason Lee, Tommy Tune

Co-star is on