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Julia Stiles (born March 28, 1981Julia Stiles is an American stage and screen actress. After beginning her theater career in small parts, she has moved on to leading roles in plays by writers as diverse as William Shakespeare and David Mamet; her film career has been both a commercial and critical success, ranging from teen romantic comedies such as (2001). When Stiles isn't working, she actively supports a variety of progressive and liberal issues.

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Julia Stiles was born in New York City, the eldest of the three children (two daughters and a son) of John O'Hara, a teacher and businessman of Irish descent, and Judith Stiles, a potter of English and Italian ancestry. She attended Friends Seminary, Quaker school in Manhattan, and was an English major at Columbia University in New York City, though she had several times interrupted her studies to pursue her film career. She graduated in May 2005, five years after entering college. Stiles is a Democrat who supported John Kerry's candidacy for President of the United States [1], and her official site, which her mother helps to maintain, provides a link to Moveon.org.

Stiles has also worked for Habitat for Humanity, building housing in Costa Rica [2], and has worked with Amnesty International to try and raise awareness of the harsh conditions of immigration detention of unaccompanied juveniles; magazine, in January 2004, featured Stiles' trip to see conditions at the Berks County Youth Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania [3] [4]. Additionally, Stiles serves on the Board of Directors of Amend.org [5], a New York-based nonprofit that implements childhood injury prevention programs in Africa.

Stiles is also an ex-vegan. When interviewed by Conan O'Brien, she said the word "orgasm" came to mind when she had her first cheeseburger after giving up veganism.

The actress has described herself as a feminist and wrote on the subject in

Stiles started acting at age eleven, performing with New York's La MaMa Theatre Company, securing work by submitting photographs of herself in costume to the company and asking that she be kept in mind for juvenile roles [7]. She graduated to adult roles by performing in Eve Ensler's and, in the summer of 2002, appeared as Viola, the lead role in Shakespeare in the Park's production of saluted Stiles as "the thinking teenagers' movie goddess" who put him in mind of a "young Jane Fonda". In the spring of 2004, she made her London stage debut opposite Aaron Eckhart in a revival of David Mamet's play (1996) with Claire Danes and Jude Law. She also had small roles as Harrison Ford's daughter in Alan J. Pakula's (1998), playing a teenage girl who murders her mother so she can have her father all to herself. Joe Balthai wrote she was "the darling of the 1998 Sundance Film Festival" and Internet movie writer Harry Knowles said she was the "discovery of the fest," but the film was not commercially released in the U.S. and went direct-to-video.

The role that made her a star was Kat Stratford, opposite Heath Ledger, in Gil Junger's set in a Seattle high school. She won an MTV Movie Award for "Breakthrough Female Performance" for the role, and the Chicago Film Critics voted her the most promising new actress of the year. Foreign critics applauded her work as well. Adina Hoffman praised her as "a young, serious looking Diane Lane" and Martin Hoyle said Stiles played Kat "with bloody-minded independent charm from the beginning with hints of wistfulness beneath the determination."

Her next starring role was in , which was heavily panned by critics but was a financial success, and earned Stiles and her co-star Freddie Prinze, Jr. a nomination for their on-screen chemistry.

She subsequently appeared in two more Shakespearean adaptations. The first was playing the Desdemona role, opposite Mekhi Phifer in the title role, in Tim Blake Nelson's (2001), as an aspiring ballerina forced to leave her small town in downstate Illinois to live with her struggling musician father in Chicago after her mother is killed. At her new, nearly all-black school, she falls in love with the character played by Sean Patrick Thomas, who teaches her hip-hop dance steps that get her into The Juilliard School. The role won her two more MTV awards for "Best Kiss" and "Best Female Performance", and a pronounced her "the coolest co-ed", putting her on the cover of its April 12, 2001 issue. She told that despite rumors, she did all her own dancing in the film, though the way the film was shot and edited made it appear otherwise.

(2000), about a film shooting on location in a small town in Vermont, she played a teenage girl who seduces a film actor (Alec Baldwin) with a weakness for young girls. Stiles also played opposite Stockard Channing in the dark art house film (2001) as a conniving, amoral secretary who exacts revenge on her cold boss. Channing was impressed by her co-star: "In addition to her talent, she has a quality that is almost feral, something that can make people uneasy. She has an effect on people." Stiles also had small roles as a CIA operative in (2004). Aimee Agresti quoted producer Lynda Obst as saying that Stiles was turning into the next Meryl Streep.

Her next leading role was in (2003) as Joan, a student at Wellesley College in 1953, whose art professor (Julia Roberts) encourages her to pursue a career in law rather than becoming a wife and mother. Stephen Holden referred to her as one of the cinema's "brightest young stars," but the film met with generally unfavorable reviews.

Stiles played a Wisconsin co-ed, with dreams of becoming a doctor, who is swept off her feet by a Danish prince in (2004), directed by Martha Coolidge. Stiles told Leslie Goober that she was very similar to the character, Paige Morgan, but critic Scott Foundas said while she was, as always, "irrepressibly engaging" the film was a "strange career choice for Stiles." This echoed criticism in reviews of (2003), a romantic comedy with Jason Lee and Selma Blair; Dennis Harvey wrote that Stiles was "wasted," and Stephen Holden called her "a serious actress from whom comedy does not seem to flow naturally."

Stiles' work on television has been more limited. After two appearances as the computer punk Erica on the PBS series (1997) on CBS, she played opposite Ellen Burstyn and Oprah Winfrey in an adaptation of the novel by Connie May Fowler; and she played a teenage girl who finds herself pregnant and runs away from her unforgiving father (Bill Smitrovich) in NBC's miniseries (1999), a film Caryn James dismissed as "conspicuously idiotic." Stiles was the public face of the film, with NBC using her face, painted with a peace sign and the American flag, both in its advertising and on the cover of the soundtrack album.

On March 17, 2001, Stiles hosted on May 5 in a cameo as President George W. Bush's daughter Jenna in a skit that poked fun at the two first daughters being arrested for underage drinking. MTV profiled her in its Martin Hoyle. "Martin Hoyle enjoys a film that turns the Bard's almost unplayable comedy into a teenage coup".