Julia Stiles has recalled how “fun” it was filming ’10 Things I Hate About You’ with the late Heath Ledger.
Julia Stiles will never forget her ‘wonderful fun summer’ working with the late Heath Ledger and the cast of ’10 Things I Hate About You’
The 43-year-old actress and the late ‘Dark Knight’ star – who tragically died in 2008, at the age of 28 – played Kat Stratford and Patrick Verona in the ’90s teen flick and shared Julia’s first onscreen kiss and she has recalled their “wonderful fun summer” together.
Speaking to E! News at the Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York City on Tuesday (02.12.24), she said: “It was so fun.
“I was just so excited to be there, and so were the other actors, and we were all so free spirited. And just we were laughing at work every day.”
She went on: “It was just such a wonderful fun summer. Such a dream for a senior in high school.”
On the film celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, she added: “I’m so happy and thrilled that people are still talking about that movie.
“It was really important to me as my first big role as an actress. It was a part that really spoke to me. And so, to know that audiences are still talking about it 25 years later is what you dream of as a performer.”
Julia previously recalled how Heath taught her how to play being drunk as she had never gotten drunk before.
Speaking to Digital Spy on the flick’s 20th anniversary in 2019, she said: “I had never gotten drunk before and I had to play drunk in one of the scenes. I remember Heath Ledger talking me through what that felt like!
“I look back on it so fondly. It’s an honour to be part of a movie that people are still talking about 20 years later.”
The film – which is loosely based on William Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ – follows Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who strikes a deal with bad boy Patrick (Heath) to date ‘shrewish’ Kat (Julia) so that her father will allow Cameron to date Kat’s sister, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik).
The movie proved to be a breakthrough role for Julia, Joseph and Heath despite the film only receiving moderate box office success upon its original release in 1999.
The ‘Riviera’ star insisted that she was desperate for a role in the movie as it was the first time she’d read a script with “such a feisty teenage girl”.
She said: “I wanted that part so badly; because it was the first time I had read such a feisty teenage girl. I hadn’t seen a teenage girl like that on-screen.”