Julia Stiles started her acting career at a young age, making her film debut aged 15 in "I Love You, I Love You Not". After a few minor roles, she hit the big time with "10 Things I Hate About You". She followed this with appearances in "Save the Last Dance" and "The Bourne Identity". Now she stars opposite Jason Lee and Selma Blair in the romantic comedy "A Guy Thing".
This is a different kind of character for you to play...
Yeah. It was a relief to play someone really klutzy! She's very sarcastic and it was great. We laughed on set all day long. I usually play more serious roles but this was a riot.
How was it working with Jason Lee?
We spent a lot of time trying to make each other laugh. I think a lot of my performance is me laughing at how funny Jason is, and not really acting.
Did you have a certain way of making the comedy work?
Jason and I discovered that we both find the same kinds of things funny. So we got into this quick banter, a rhythm almost like music, where you kind of have a shorthand. He would say or do one thing and I would follow it up. That kind of shorthand is such a relief, because it would be hard to work with someone you didn't share that with in a movie like this. Jason and Selma are naturally funny. It was very liberating because it takes quite a lot of time to work out what's funny and what isn't funny.
You and Selma have worked together before. Did you gang up on Jason a lot?
Jason did all the teasing! I basically stole all Jason Lee's jokes and when I went back to school after the movie finished, everybody thought I was really funny. But I was just quoting Jason Lee. He has a running joke that he uses, and I've taken it now and it's all mine!
