Julia Stiles Recalls the Piece of Feedback She Received While Auditioning as a Teen That Always Made Her 'Angry'

Julia Stiles recalls being told to “smile more” and be less serious during acting auditions as a teenager

NEED TO KNOW

• She says the repeated feedback made her angry at first, but led her to appreciate her role as Kat Stratford in 10 Things I Hate About You

• The 1999 film saw Stiles star as a broody teenager — a role that she noted still resonates with fans today

Julia Stilesis looking back at her early days in Hollywood — and a piece of feedback she says stuck with her for all the wrong reasons.

"I remember being an auditioning actress as a teenager, and every single audition that I went to, they'd be like, 'You need to smile more. Just smile, be more bubbly and effervescent. Because you're so serious. You're too serious,' " 45-year-old Stiles recounted in a "Get Ready with Me" video filmed in partnership with the beauty brand Merit andposted on Instagram.

Stiles continued: "And that just made me angry, but luckily I found the role of Kat Stratford in10 Things I Hate About You."

Stiles' role in the 1999 teen classic would go on to define her career and introduce audiences to one of the genre’s most memorable protagonists, and one who was much more independent than some of the traditionally optimistic female characters often seen at the time.

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"It was just so much fun playing her because she wasn't driven by everybody else's judgment of her," Stiles said of the role. "How awesome that, like 25 years later, different generations of ladies are still responding to her and that movie?"

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The film, loosely inspired byThe Taming of the Shrew, became a cultural touchstone and helped solidify Stiles as a defining face of late-’90s and early-2000s teen cinema.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt,Gabrielle Unionand the lateHeath Ledgeralso starred in the film, which tells the story of high school student Cameron (Gordon-Levitt) trying to find a date for Kat (Stiles) as he wants to date her younger sister, Bianca (Larisa Oleynik).

Stiles went on to star in projects includingSave the Last Danceand theBournefilm series.

Speaking to PEOPLE in 2025, Stiles elaborated on the "serious" comments she often got during auditions, saying, "I was a 17-year-old actress auditioning and getting a lot of annoying comments like, ‘You're too serious’ or ‘you need to be sexier’ or ‘smile more’ and I was vulnerable to it because I was still trying to figure out who I was."

She continued: "And then I read10 Things I Hate About Youand Kat Stratford was like this feisty, outspoken girl who did not care what people thought about her."

“So it meant a lot to me to be in that movie and that it resonates with people still is so great," Stiles said at the time.

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