Whatever happened to Julia Stiles?

The actress Julia Stiles (New York, 1981) is like an old friend for millenials. Besides her incredible talent and beauty, the actress was part of some of the most iconic films around the Y2K era.

For a while, she was the most popular actress of her generation. Her face decorated many high school lockers. But when was the last time you heard of her?

How could such a popular star, who demonstrated her acting chops not only in teen rom-coms but Shakesperean plays, vashish like she did from the limelight? Here's her story.

The last big film role in which we saw the actress was in the 2022 horror movie directed by William Brent Bell, 'Orphan: First Kill.' But let's go back to see how she emerged, how she dealt with rising to such great heights of fame and how she's sustained a Hollywood career for close to 30 years.

Her debut in front of the cameras was in 1996 in the movie 'I Love You, I Love you not', by Billy Hopkins. However, years before, she was almost cast as the little vampire kid in 'Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles', which was finally played by Kirsten Dunst.

In the end, according to The Telegraph, the director of the film thought that Stiles was "too old" to get into character.

After her debut, she played many secondary roles in films like 'The Devil's Own' and 'Before Women Had Wings' both in 1997. Her real protagonist role came with the movie 'Wicked' (1988) directed by Michael Steinberg.

However, the film that made her popular was '10 Things I Hate About You' (1999) directed by Gil Junger. In the movie, the actress played the high school student, Kat Stratford.

The story is a version of the play by William Shakespeare: 'The Taming of the Shrew'. Julia Stiles shared the cast with other famous teenage stars, Heath Ledger and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Although she was still pretty anonymous, she won the role over other top female Hollywood stars, like Kate Hudson and Katie Holmes. Finally, the couple formed by Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger was chosen over Eliza Dushku and Josh Harnett who were also considered for the roles.

In the movie, Julia Stiles not only delivers an amazing performance but creates a character that is far from the usual pretty girl of a rom-com film. Kat is a feminist, smart, rebellious, anti-social, and really sarcastic. Iconic, her role granted the actress an MTV Movie Award and turned her into an absolute star of the '00s.

In 2001, she starred in another massive teen hit: 'Save the Last Dance.' The film used the fusion of hip hop and ballet to address racism and classism, and Stiles spent long days training in dance to nail the scenes.

Immediately after, the actress filmed two other movies based on Shakespeare plays: 'Hamlet' (2000), by Michael Almereyda, and 'O' (2001), an Othello version set in an elitist boarding school and directed by Tim Blake Nelson. Unfortunately, the actress didn't repeat the same success as in '10 Things'

After that, she decided to do tohe unthinkable: swap the glamor of Hollywood for college. She chose academia over acting and went to study English literature at Columbia University, graduating in 2005.

But her studies didn't entirely stop her from acting: She starred along with Kirsten Dunst and Julia Roberts in 'Mona Lisa Smile' (2003) directed by Mike Newell; and was Nicky opposite Matt Damon in several 'Bourne' movies (2002, 2004, 2007, 2016).

In 2007, she told Independent that all the thinking she did in college maybe got in the way of her reacting viscerally to things as an actor. "Being cerebral isn't necessarily the best thing for an actress," she said. " I tend to think about things too much." But in a later interview, she said her college buddies helped keep her grounded because they couldn't care less that she was a famous actor.

Image: Stiles and her ex-boyfriend, the painter and sculpter Jonathan Cramer

The actress has also demonstrated her talent on stage in plays like 'Oleanna' or 'Phoenix'. She said she played 'Oleanna' in 2005 while in college, but at the time thinks she "politicized it too much." When she got to do it again in 2009, she said she felt like she could go much deeper and enjoy it a lot more.

She has also been part of successful series like 'Dexter' (in 2010), which got her a Golden Globe nod for Best Supporting Actress. Then she starred in Riviera' (2017-2020), while also making an appearance in 'The Mindy Project.'

We also saw her as a secondary character in the Jennifer Lopez movie 'Hustlers' in 2019, which many say gave her career fresh momentum. She has followed that film up with roles in 'The God Committee' (2021) and the psychological horror film 'Orphan: First Kill."

In 2017, she married the camera assistant Preston J. Cook who she met on the set of the Canadian thriller 'Blackway (Go with me)' directed by Daniel Alfredson. The couple has two children: Strummer Newcomb (2017) and Arlo (2022).

What is she up to now? Well, you can see her on the ongoing Amazon Prime comedy series, called 'The Lake'. In the show, released in the summer of 2022, Stiles plays one of the main roles: The protagonist's sister, Maisy-May.

It's clear that Julia Stiles is not your ordinary Hollywood star. The actress has also developed her humanitarian side and has collaborated with different NGOs like Habitat for Humanity and International Amnesty.

It's been a long time since she first delighted us with her acting on the screen, and we will always remember what a breath of fresh air Julia Stiles was in the early aughts. But it's good to see she's still sharing her gifts, albeit in a more low-profile way that seems to suit her grounded and intellectual personality.