Some actors and actresses remain in the public eye for many years, such as Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson, while others seem to appear for just a short time. Yet, just because a person is not constantly in the limelight does not mean she is not working in the industry. Media attention is rarely consistent even when actors and actresses are continually putting out quality work.
During the 1990s, a young star arose on stage and in film, Julia Stiles. She began acting onstage professionally when she was twelve, in 1993. The daughter of an artist (her mother) and an elementary school teacher (her father), Julia and her two siblings were born in New York City. Dance lessons served as Stiles’s entree into the world of performance.
While still a teen, Stiles began to have, at first, small roles in movies and finally a lead part in Wicked in 1998. From there, she has worked with well-established actors and actresses such as Heath Ledger, Julia Roberts, Mekhi Phifer, Matt Damon, and Anthony Hopkins. Before the age of twenty, Julia Stiles had been in ten movies, three television shows, and countless stage productions.
In addition to a developing acting career, Stiles also went to college at Columbia University in New York City, receiving a degree in English Literature. It took her five years to finish college because she took a semester off to work on The Bourne Identity. She has had roles in three adaptations of plays by William Shakespeare: Ten Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew), Hamlet, and O (Othello), so an English lit degree must have come in handy.
Prior to attending Columbia, which is one of the finest universities in the US, Stiles went to the New York’s Professional Children’s School. This school obviously provided her with a fine college preparatory academic background that worked around her acting jobs as well as teaching her how to improve her trade, thus supporting her burgeoning career.
Many of Stiles’s early roles were of teenagers and college students, not all of whom were wholesome or in positive situations. In Wicked, her character killed her mother. In David Mamet’s script for State and Main, she plays a teen that is involved with an older man. She also played in an Oprah Winfrey production about child abuse, Before Women Had Wings. By the way, Stiles later played in David Mamet’s play, Oleanna, in London and later, on Broadway. Like Shakespeare’s plays, Mamet’s work is challenging to do well.
Hollywood too often typecasts actors and Julia Stiles has been known for playing young women. Nevertheless, Stiles has managed to continue to work even now in her thirties, which is a major challenge to overcome. Probably, her continued involvement in the Bourne movies has helped with this, as she has played Nicky Parsons since the first of the series. She is back in another movie of the Bourne series, Jason Bourne, released in July, 2016. She also played in an adaptation of a well-known children’s novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins recently. Keeping up with the times, in addition to stage, film, and television appearances, she is a lead actress in a web-based series, Blue, and a British television mini-series, Riviera, to be released in 2017.
Julia Stiles has been nominated for and won a range of awards, including Teen Choice and the International Academy of Web Television. She has been nominated for the Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy awards. Significantly, she has won several awards as part of an ensemble that indicates she is able to work as a team member with other actors and actresses.
Along with her career as an actress, Julia Stiles has been involved in other things. Sometimes there has been wild speculation about Julia Stiles. Here are some things she really enjoys. She once sang onstage with Prince. He gave her a tambourine, which she still has. She learned to knit from Julia Roberts when they were working on the movie, Mona Lisa Smile. She has also been involved with both Amnesty International and Habitat for Humanity, where she built houses for people in Costa Rica. With her career, she has traveled all around the world and she travels very often. In baseball, she loves the New York Mets and she loves the New York Red Bulls soccer team. She is engaged to be married to a cameraman she met in British Columbia’s Okanagan mountains, Preston J. Cook.
Julia Stiles’s background, education, and career have helped her to become a well-rounded, humane person. She has had steady employment as an actress since the 1990s and, equally importantly, she has become the kind of person fans can be proud of.
