The Stunning Transformation Of Actor Julia Stiles

Julia Stiles has never been your typical Hollywood star. While some young actors chased career-making roles in big-budget films or network series, Stiles was first introduced to audiences on PBS. Then, during the late 1990s — when image was everything (and that image was usually oversexualized) — she became a teen movie icon playing a fiercely feminist character. Afterward, she refused to stick to the teen/rom-com lane, instead opting to send up Shakespeare and go off the beaten path for parts, while still managing to dabble in franchise filmmaking.

Stiles' circuitous journey continues now, as she has reinvented herself as a force to be reckoned with in one of reality TV's most competitive forums in "Dancing with the Stars." All the while, she has managed to build out a relatively normal life away from the camera, getting her education, marrying, and having children.

From her "10 Things I Hate About You" breakout to "Dexter," directing her first feature film, and beyond, Stiles has undergone a stunning transformation over the years. Here's how her story has unfolded and evolved, from the early 1990s to the 2020s.

Julia Stiles grew up in the SoHo area of Manhattan in New York City where, according to The New York Daily News, her parents owned a pottery business. It was there that she first developed a love for stories told on screen. However, she also developed a love of theatre thanks to her grandmother, which ultimately led her to acting.

"My grandmother took me to a lot of theatre. I was exposed to performance quite a bit — everything from Broadway to off-Broadway and dance and music as well. I was very lucky that way. It was a very rich childhood," Stiles told Interview Magazine in 2016. Stiles also recalled that a production of "A Doll's House" with Janet McTeer was among the first productions she ever saw. "We had seats in the very back row, but her performance was so powerful — it was very accessible. I felt like I was much closer than I was," she added.

As an 11-year-old, Stiles was compelled to embark on her own acting journey, writing a letter to a director in hopes of landing an audition. At the time, her only acting experience was reportedly from a YMCA class, but that was about to change. "He was impressed with the letter," Stiles told MovieMaker in 1998. "So he offered me a three-line part." So began a decades-long journey for Stiles.

One of Stiles' first acting jobs came via a veritable icon of '80s and '90s pop culture in Cyndi Lauper. In the early '90s, Stiles starred in the music video for the song "Sally's Pigeons," stepping into Lauper's shoes to portray an earlier chapter in the singer's life.

"The Cyndi Lauper music video was mind-blowing to me, because I was and I am a huge fan. I don't know how old I was, maybe 15 or maybe younger, like 14 or something. ... I was playing as a younger version of Cyndi Lauper, and that was so exciting," Stiles said of the experience in 2020 (via The AV Club), adding that she had to stuff her bra to play older. "I actually ran into her decades later. I don't remember where, but I very shyly, unconsciously went up to her like, 'Do you...?' And she was like, 'Julia!' She remembered me, which was cool."

It was also around this time that Stiles appeared as Erica Dansby in several episodes of the Children's Television Workshop/BBC series "Ghostwriter," which aired on PBS in the U.S. However, Stiles looks back on that particular chapter with far less fondness. "'Ghostwriter,' I mean, to be honest, I'm pretty embarrassed, and I wish that it didn't have a life on the internet," she told the outlet. "I was so little and precocious, and it's embarrassing to me."

Before long, Stiles was piling up film and television credits. She made her big-screen debut in the 1996 romantic drama "I Love You, I Love You Not," which starred up-and-comers Claire Danes and Jude Law. Later, she appeared in episodes of CBS' "Promised Land" and "Chicago Hope." It wouldn't be long, though, before she was sharing the screen with Hollywood icons. In 1997, Stiles appeared alongside Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt in "The Devil's Own" (playing the daughter of Ford's character).

However, it was on the 1998 thriller "Wicked" that she first truly flexed her muscles as a young star who could own the screen. Stiles played Ellie Christianson in the Michael Steinberg-directed thriller — a teenage girl who seemingly has designs on replacing her mother after the latter's brutal murder. As noted later by The New York Post, the film impressed viewers at the Sundance Film Festival. Alas, disputes involving the studio, producers, and Steinberg prevented it from having the kind of reach it arguably deserved.

"It was terrible because Julia was very proud of it, and it got wonderful reviews. She would always ask me about the movie, but it just died on the shelf," director Michael Steinberg said in 2001 (via The New York Post). It wouldn't be long, though, before Stiles would get her first big moment in the sun.

Stiles' breakout role  — and maybe the project she's still most associated with today — came in 1999 via first-time director Gil Junger's "10 Things I Hate About You." One of multiple Shakespeare adaptations to feature the actor, "10 Things" put Stiles in the role of Kat Stratford, the movie's version of Katherina from "The Taming of the Shrew." She starred alongside Heath Ledger, who played Patrick Verona — the bad boy paid by Andrew Keegan's character to date her so that he could get with Kat's younger sister (played by Larisa Oleynik), in keeping with a rule established by the girls' father.

Stiles' powerful performance and the character's feminist energy made the role an iconic outlier among the teen fare of the day. "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," Stiles told People in 2025. "And then I read '10 Things I Hate About You' and Kat Stratford was like this feisty outspoken girl who did not care what people thought about her."

Explained Junger to RogerEbert.com for a 2019 oral history of the film: "Most of the girls came in to audition wearing sexy clothes. Julia came in wearing baggy pants and a t-shirt, hair up in a bun." Stiles' work as Kat netted her an MTV Movie Award for breakthrough female performance.

After "10 Things I Hate About You," Stiles became one of the "it" girls of young Hollywood during the Y2K era. She followed up that role with 2000's "Down to You," which examined the ups and downs of a long-term relationship between college sweethearts Imogen (Stiles) and Al (Freddie Prinze, Jr.). She later starred as Sara Johnson alongside Sean Patrick Thomas in 2001's "Save the Last Dance," which chronicled the exploits of a ballet dancer and would-be Juilliard student following her mother's death. 

While it didn't enjoy the same kind of critical reception that "10 Things" did, "Last Dance" punched above its weight at the box office, grossing over $130 million worldwide as a modestly-budgeted teen film, per Box Office Mojo. Although Stiles would continue to appear in box office hits over the ensuing years, this era of her career was also marked by roles in smaller, less commercial and low-budget projects. She continued her Shakespeare streak with 2000's Ethan Hawke-led "Hamlet" and 2001's "O," which featured Mekhi Phifer in an Othello-adjacent role. She also was part of the ensemble cast of David Mamet's 2000 comedy "State and Main."

A 2026 Entertainment Weekly ranking of Stiles' top roles in film and television saw "O" land in the No. 8 spot, while "Last Dance" was ranked as the second-best role or performance of her career, after "10 Things."

Stiles continued to land roles in prominent films as the 2000s wore on. Highlights include 2003's "A Guy Thing," 2003's "Mona Lisa Smile" — which saw her star alongside the likes of Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, and Maggie Gyllenhaal –  and 2004's "The Prince and Me." It was also during this time that she became part of a James Bond-level action franchise for the new millennium in the Matt Damon-led "Bourne" series.

Beginning with the first film, "The Bourne Identity," in 2002, Stiles played Nicolette "Nicky" Parsons — a CIA operative like Damon's Jason Bourne — in four "Bourne" movies. All four films were massive box office hits, but Stiles almost wasn't part of them. When the first film was being cast, she was pursuing an English Literature degree from Columbia University, and she was concerned that doing the movie would throw her off the academic track.

"This is how weird my head was at the time. I was like, 'Oh, but I can't go and do this movie because I have my final exams coming up and I'll lose all my credits," she told Mayim Bialik in 2025. "Luckily, somebody was like, 'Are you crazy?' and talked me out of it and was like, 'You need to do this movie.'" Stiles ultimately did the movie(s), and still graduated from Columbia in 2005.

By 2010, Julia Stiles' career as a leading lady had cooled somewhat. 2007's "The Bourne Ultimatum" was a box office juggernaut and her role as Nicky Parsons had been expanded from earlier entries, but it had been a hot minute since she had been the top name on the call sheet of a project that had generated significant buzz in the movie industry. Despite that tapering off after her early-2000s boom period, Stiles was able to remind the world what she had to offer by taking her talents to one of television's top drama series, Showtime's "Dexter," to kick off the 2010s.

Stiles played Lumen Pierce, who ultimately enlists Dexter (Michael C. Hall) to seek revenge on a group of men after witnessing him murder a serial killer who was holding her captive. Lumen's arc played out over the course of the show's fifth season, and Stiles' performance in the role netted her Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

"It was great. It was my first introduction to a cable drama," Stiles explained to Collider in 2021. "And I remember back then, cable had just started to become great and really appealing to actors. I had always had this fear of, if you sign up for a TV show, which would be like a six-year contract, is it gonna end up being something that you didn't anticipate or something that wasn't really what you signed up for? 'Dexter' totally changed my mind about that."

Julia Stiles' "Dexter" turn was undoubtedly a career highlight for the New York City native, but her time on the show didn't come without its pitfalls personally and professionally. While her chemistry with series star Michael C. Hall was electric on-screen, it led to rumors that Stiles and Hall were becoming more than just coworkers behind the scenes.

In late 2010, two years after Hall had wed his longtime "Dexter" costar Jennifer Carpenter, it was revealed that the two actors were divorcing. And while their marriage faced pressures including Hall's Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosis, rumblings of Hall having been unfaithful with Stiles also began to proliferate on the blogosphere and among celebrity gossip outlets. While Stiles had typically avoided commenting on such stories, she was compelled to refute the stories romantically linking her to Hall amid his divorce from Carpenter.

"I have absolutely nothing to do with the split between Michael and Jennifer," Stiles said in a statement (via People) at the time. "We are good friends and enjoyed working together. This is a personal matter between them, and we should respect their privacy." For her part, Carpenter continued to work with Hall on "Dexter" and its follow-up series "Dexter: New Blood."

While Julia Stiles didn't date Michael C. Hall, her dating track record has still been a source of intrigue for decades now. She was reportedly "in love" with one of her "10 Things I Hate About You" costars — not Heath Ledger but Joseph Gordon-Levitt — according to director Gil Junger. She was later linked to fellow Y2K-era stars Joshua Jackson and Josh Hartnett, as well as her "The Prince and Me" costar Luke Mably and artist Jonathan Cramer.

More recently, she dated "Stranger Things" star David Harbour for multiple years, during which the two appeared on red carpets together. Stiles starred alongside Harbour in the 2012 Joe Hortua-penned film "Between Us." According to Elle, the two actors were an item for four years, from 2011 to 2015, while living in New York City; a relationship that the outlet described as "very serious." However, reports on the timeline of their relationship differ, with SheKnows describing the partnership as having lasted until 2013 (via Yahoo! Entertainment).

In any case, Harbour was an important part of her life during the period after "Dexter," when she was balancing major projects like the 2012 film "Silver Linings Playbook" with more low-key productions, such as the web series "Blue."

Julia Stiles finally met her romantic match in 2014, when she was introduced to Preston Cook on the set of the Daniel Alfredson-helmed thriller "Blackway," in which she starred alongside Anthony Hopkins and Ray Liotta. Cook was working on the film as a camera operator, and the two ended up hitting it off in spectacular fashion. When asked by The Guardian about the best kiss of her life in 2015, Stiles responded, "It might have happened this morning. I am dating a camera assistant I met at work called Preston."

As reported by E! News, Stiles went on to announce her engagement to Cook in early 2016. The pair would ultimately tie the knot in September 2017. Stiles was already pregnant when she and Cook were preparing to exchange their vows. "Who doesn't love a shotgun wedding?" she quipped playfully in an Instagram post later that month, alongside a photo of Cook's hand resting on her baby bump as she wore her wedding gown.

Fast-forward to 2026 and Stiles and Cook are still married and have welcomed three sons — Strummer, Arlo, and Henry — to their family.

Having already dipped her toes into the world of prestige television drama series with "Dexter," it was an easy transition for Julia Stiles to make the move back to the small screen again when she joined the cast of the 2017-20 Sky Atlantic series "Riviera," in which she played an American art curator whose life descends into the chaos following the untimely death of her incredibly wealthy husband (portrayed by Anthony LaPaglia) in a yacht accident. 

For Stiles, it's a project and role that stand out amid her myriad credits. "My favorite character that I've ever played is probably Georgina from 'Riviera,'" Stiles told The Sunday Times in 2020. "She's just very reckless and bold and that allows me to play out other things and that I don't have the courage to in real life." Even now, years after the show reached its end, "Riviera" continues to find new fans via streaming.

After "Riviera," Stiles landed a role on the Amazon Prime Video comedy series "The Lake," which lasted two seasons, from 2022 to 2023. She also voiced a character on Hulu/Peacock's "DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms."

In 2025, Julia Stiles made her feature directorial debut with "Wish You Were Here." She reclaimed the spotlight in a big way the following year, though, joining the cast of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" for the series' 35th season. Partnering with seasoned ballroom vet Ezra Sosa, Stiles has shown that the skills she showed off in "Save the Last Dance" were more than just movie magic. In doing so, she has paid homage to the film, recreating her memorable audition dance sequence during "DWTS'" Super Bowl Night, with Sean Patrick Thomas making a cameo appearance.

"I looked at Julia, like, 'We have to lean in all the way. The millennials will love it,'" Sosa said after the couple's "Save the Last Dance" moment (via Entertainment Weekly). Sosa added,"We didn't even think the judges were going to like this routine." Not one to rest on her laurels, Stiles brought the nostalgia again during Dedication Night, honoring Heath Ledger by dancing with Sosa to Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," a callback to a memorable sequence from "10 Things I Hate About You" featuring the late star.

Stiles was joined on the broadcast by several of her "10 Things" castmates, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Andrew Keegan, and more.