Julia Stiles Was Told to Smile More at 17. Then She Read for the Role of Kat Stratford in ’10 Things I Hate About You’
· Thought Catalog
Updated 42 minutes ago, October 6, 2026
Julia Stiles was hearing that she was too serious and should smile more at auditions when she found Kat Stratford, the teenager she’d play in 10 Things I Hate About You.
Looking back on The Jennifer Hudson Show on September 21, 2026, Stiles described being 17 and struggling to find girls’ roles that interested her. Reading Kat changed that: “I loved her because she was feisty and fierce, and it really spoke to me.”
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The comments had reached her at an uncertain age. She told People she was “vulnerable to it because I was still trying to figure out who I was.”
Kat offered her a character who could be outspoken and comfortable with her own opinions. In a 2020 interview with The Independent, Stiles recalled thinking, “Finally, a teenage girl who speaks to me,” and said the film affirmed that it was OK to be intellectual.
10 Things I Hate About You opened in U.S. theaters on March 31, 1999, more than 27 years before her recent conversation with Hudson. Reflecting on its lasting connection with viewers, Stiles told People: “So it meant a lot to me to be in that movie and that it resonates with people still is so great.”
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