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By Angela Dawson
Entertainment News Wire
HOLLYWOOD --
Julia Stiles earned her first acting paycheck at the tender age
of 12 for a play called "Jungle Movie."
"It was for $100, which is a
pretty big deal when you're 12," Stiles recalls. "I think I spent it on CDs."
The native New Yorker would earn a lot more in the next decade as she
developed into one of Hollywood's top young stars. After making her movie debut
playing Harrison Ford's daughter in 1997's "The Devil's Own," Stiles went on to star in "10 Things I Hate About You," "Hamlet," "State & Main" and "Save the Last Dance." She recently played a 1950s college
student who chooses domestic life over postgraduate education in "Mona Lisa Smile."
In "The Prince & Me," the pretty blonde again plays a college
student confronted with the choice of whether to continue her education or
follow her heart. Stiles is Paige Morgan, a down-to-earth pre-med student at a
Wisconsin college. Luke Mably ("28 Days Later") plays Crown Prince Edvard Valdemar Dangaard,
who is enrolled incognito as Eddie, a foreign exchange student, in hopes of
escaping his royal responsibilities. They meet. He invites her to a state gala.
She introduces him to lawnmower racing. Can true love overcome class
differences?
"My intention with the movie was to be in a romance, almost
like the classic love stories from the '50s," says the actress, who turned 23 on
March 28. "It's a tried-and-true story of two people from different walks of
life connecting on a really deep level, and there's a fantasy element to it.
What's nice is that my character is really grounded, real and believable."
An admitted "royal watcher," Stiles finds the fishbowl life of European
royalty fascinating. Though she's never actually met any royals, she would like
to meet England's Prince William some day, mostly to satisfy her curiosity. "I'd
ask him if he really gets his newspapers ironed in the morning," she says. "I
also wonder if I'm allowed to shake hands or even touch him."
Though the
idea of becoming a princess is many girls' fantasy, Stiles wouldn't trade her
life as an actress for that of a royal. "They get the negative part of the job
without the benefits of my job," she says.
When she's not making movies,
Stiles, like her "Prince & Me" character, is a college student. "It's nice
to go to a place where my professors demand that I perform intellectually," says
the actress, who is a junior majoring in English literature at New York's
Columbia University. "They care about my ideas and what I have to say."
The college experience has stimulated her growth intellectually as well
as emotionally, she says. "So much of college is learning how to make the
transition into becoming an adult in a place where you can make mistakes," she
says. "It equips you with tools to be a learner all your life."
A bright
student, Stiles admits she's a bit of an overachiever. Initially, she was so
into school that she'd run home and study after class to avoid interacting with
her peers. She's loosened up a bit, though she remains an A student. She also
has a boyfriend at Columbia whom she declines to name. "He freaks out whenever
he reads about himself in print," she says.
Despite her fame, she
manages to get around campus practically unnoticed. "I go to school with a lot
of driven kids focused on their own agendas and I don't think my professors
watch TV or go to the movies much," she says with a laugh.
Stiles counts
herself among those "driven" underclassmen. Getting a C, she admits, would be
"painful." "I put pressure on myself, even though I'm not very disciplined," she
says. "I have this pride thing; I'd be embarrassed."
Stiles also takes
her celebrity seriously, knowing that young women look up to her as a role
model. So it's unlikely you'll find her in Maxim. More likely, you'll see her
looking wholesomely sweet on the cover of Bride's or Marie Claire. "I'm not a
perfect person," she says, "but I try to be honest in my work. It's a privilege
and a responsibility."
In "The Prince & Me," she plays a science
student who turns to Eddie to tutor her in Shakespeare. In real life, Stiles is
well versed in Shakespeare (she starred in three Shakespeare-themed films) and
has an aversion to beakers.
"I'm not a science person at all," she says,
shaking her head. "I get scared of laboratories. It goes back to when I was in
7th grade and switched from a public to a private school and embarrassed myself
in class by asking the teacher what a beaker was. Everyone laughed, so ever
since then I've had a fear of science classes."
Stiles recently took a
semester off to star in "The Bourne Supremacy," the sequel to the hit thriller "The
Bourne Identity." In "The Bourne Supremacy," she reprises the character of a
young CIA agent who helps Matt Damon's rogue spy Jason Bourne. "I have a really great
scene with him in the movie where he catches me sort of spying on him," she says
with a grin.
Next up for the actress is a return to the stage. She is set
to star in a London production of the David Mamet drama "Oleanna" opposite Aaron Eckhart. "I love Mamet because he writes specifically the
rhythm that actors have to speak," she says. "You have to say to the very last
word the dialogue he writes. That's what's great about his writing; the speech
patterns are so interesting."
Stiles previously worked under Mamet's
direction in the ensemble drama "State & Main." She admits she was
intimidated by the Pulitzer prize-winning writer-director when she first met
him, having heard rumors that he was tough on actors. "But it's not true," she
insists. "On set he was wonderful. He keeps everything simple and he's not
precious about the work he does, so it makes it easier as an
actor."
Inspired by him and others, she took a playwriting class last
semester. "I like writing," says the actress, who once wrote a screenplay that
was accepted into the prestigious Sundance Institute's Writer's Lab.
Still, Stiles is not sure she plans to pursue writing alongside acting.
"It's something I enjoy doing as a way of expressing myself, but it's not my No.
1 thing," she says.
