Julia Stiles Wanted to Be Just Like Kat Stratford, Too

Larisa Oleynik, who performed Kat’s child sister, Bianca, remembers rewatching “10 Things” not too long ago. “The thing I love so much — and I’m going to get emotional — is, she’s so earnest,” Oleynik mentioned. “She’s so genuine. And to me, that is the most beautiful thing about Julia’s portrayal of that character. It is coming from a deeply heartfelt, vulnerable, sensitive, insanely intelligent place,” she mentioned, whereas including: “I don’t think anyone else would have been able to be that real.”

Stiles began performing as a 12-year-old in New York’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, however had a tough time discovering her place in movie. “I was a 17-year-old girl, auditioning for romantic comedies and commercials and TV shows and always being told, ‘You’re too serious,’” she mentioned. “You know, ‘Smile. You’re too angsty.’” That modified when she learn the “10 Things” script. “It was the first time that I had read a character in a teenage romantic comedy that spoke to me,” she mentioned.

As Oleynik remembers it, Stiles was that lady, “a cool, downtown New Yorker” who, although only some months Oleynik’s senior, “seemed so much more mature.” Before the “10 Things” desk learn, Oleynik had gone to Fred Segal to purchase her real-life junior promenade gown, an indigo slip that wasn’t all that dissimilar to the promenade gown Kat wears within the film. “I really, really wanted her approval,” Oleynik mentioned. “I remember thinking, if Julia approves, I can go.”

IN 2002, ACCORDING TO THE self-appointed cultural anthropologists at Newsweek journal, there have been precisely three kinds of teenage ladies in America. You may very well be an Alpha: a blonde who cherished cheerleading, worshiped Gwyneth and Vogue, and managed to be “both bitchy and nice.” You may very well be a Beta, which was principally an aspiring Alpha; Betas reportedly took weight loss supplements as after-school snacks, spent after-prom at a motel, and had been, tragically, brunette. Or you can be part of a rising cohort of Gamma Girls: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-watching, flare-jeans-wearing freethinkers who had been “obsessed with Shakespeare,” dated the “class smartass,” and subscribed to Jane journal. The poster little one for the Gamma Girl: Julia Stiles.