Julia Stiles Quotes

Of course my family and friends are incredibly valuable to me. They keep me sane, they teach me things and I love spending time with them. I think that ranking what you value is a sort of western and linear way of looking at things.

I met this homeless man who had never owned a shirt in his life. He had taken his pants and worn them as a shirt and I thought it was so creative. He was liberated from the conventions of fashion.

I wear everything from hip-hop baggy pants to beautiful Armani dresses. I also like to mix vintage clothing with designer pieces.

I'm going to Columbia University but I'm trying to keep that low-profile because I don't want weird people following me there. I want the experience of normal college life.

It's actually really great to be a student and an actor, because I get to do this job that I love, then just when I think my head might explode, I get to go to school where they don't really care about what magazine cover I'm on.

Make yourself useful, not just on a day to day basis, but as a lifetime thing.

I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going.

I tend to gravitate toward the more powerful roles. As opposed to the doe-eyed girl who bats her eyelashes and runs around in towels, you now what I mean? Because that kind of makes me want to vomit.

I always feel like a goofy little kid.

My regular school didn't know what to do with me!

I am a big fan of horror movies but I had never thought that I had wanted to act in one because I don't think that actors get to do much in them. They're usually just reacting.

I think that ultimately I just have to be myself. You know, I don't do anything that outlandish anyway.

I took the role of Ophelia in Hamlet because she is so naive, loving, and innocent.

I think audiences, producers and directors included, develop crushes on actors (actresses in particular) and then lose interest and move on to the next one.

Yoga has stopped me from destroying my joints after running. It slows me down. My brain and body can go into overdrive - yoga teaches me to focus on the moment and not get ahead of myself.

If I'm gong out to a club I like to have fun with it. I'll use blue or red sparkly eyeliners and glittery eye shadows. Then I'll put on some blue mascara. I focus on the eyes.

Education is huge for me. I went to public school until I turned thirteen, and was lucky enough to afford college once I became successful as an actress.

When Paul [Greengrass] was writing, he'd send me story ideas that he had. He was particularly interested in social movements and revolutions that had been happening all over the world, and how computers and the internet had helped those movements. He encouraged me to read a book about Anonymous, the hacker group called "white hat" hackers, meaning they're driven by ideology and social disruption as opposed to just greed.

I’ve really turned a corner recently in terms of not taking work too seriously, so it is much easier for me to not take my work home.

Seeing other people in pain causes me pain.

I used to struggle a lot with dwelling on how the day at work was, and I would dwell on my performance. Now, I'm like, "Well, that's over and done with, and I can't control the outcome, so move on." I just remember that it's entertainment I am making.

I am forever grateful that I got some training in the theater - it reduces performance anxiety.

I know it sounds earnest, but I do really feel in my bones that acting is just a small part of the equation when you are making a movie. The director really is in charge. Actors are as important or unimportant as the rest of the people around them.

Theater makes working in movies or TV seem like a cake-walk.

Theater is like going to the gym for actors.

The only thing that gets me through any type of pain, emotional or physical, is to make it worthwhile by putting it into my work.

I was happy when I read the script [The Bourne Ultimatum ] - the first version they sent me - to see that before, there's some humanity too.

I think it's really special to be a part of something that people are still watching or thinking about or interested in, or remember fondly many years later. I don't think it's annoying at all.

I pretty much grew up in public.

Sometimes I have these abstract ideas and then lose track of myself.

Being an actor is looked at like a prolonged game of dress-up. America puts movie stars on pedestals. In college, it's the flip side. I sometimes have to justify my job to my professors because they're focused on intellect and ideas.

I think women get caught up too much in having a plan - 'I'm going to get married at this age I'm going to have a kid at this age' - and then they just try to find a guy who will fit into that picture. I don't want my life to be based on that.

There are a handful of actors who sustain interest because it's exciting to watch them get better at what they do. I want to be one of those actors.

I always loved how people like Jon Voight and Laurence Olivier shocked you every time they came on-screen. They were so different each time. That's what I hope to do with acting - be the chameleon and not get stuck in a type.

I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then.

So I am happy to have fans, especially if it enables me to keep working. And I am really grateful when people respond to my work.

Even after such milestones as Kathryn Bigelow winning an Oscar, there still seem to be few women in leadership roles.

I worked regularly from very early on, and some of it was probably a bit premature.

It's fun to stay at the Y! M! C! A!

I feel like I have a skill set, but every experience is different and there's always room for improvement.

In my early career, I look at that time as a series of trial and error and learning as I go.

I like a director that encourages me to be playful. I don't really like being restricted or controlled by a director.

I like a director who is very observant and is watching what I'm doing and noticing what I'm doing, but is giving me time to figure it out. They don't jump right in and give you a note before you've had time to really search on your own with how to do a scene.

Actors can write and produce too. Then when I was working on Jason Bourne­ - having had that experience - instead of going back to my trailer and being separate from everyone else, I would sit behind the monitor and watch Paul Greengrass work and be much more included in the process. That was new for me and really enriching.

I did a run of a play over the summer in a really tiny theater in New York and that was rejuvenating for me. I directed a short series for Hulu called Paloma and being in an editing room, I learned a lot about acting.

I remember seeing Janet McTeer in A Doll's House. My grandmother took me and 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.

The exercise in theater is night after night you are doing the same play, but you have another opportunity to explore. It changes nightly even because of the audience and your day going into the evening of the performance. With film it's much more controlled.

With film, so much is in the director's hands. Once something is cut together - unless you're in the editing room - you don't really remember what the alternatives are.

Bill Pullman is older than Aaron Eckhart - although I was older too - and the age difference changes the play. My perspective on those issues had changed a lot. Without going into nerdy details about that play, there was something that still stuck with me. I still had the same joy in that dialogue and David Mamet's rhythm in terms of his writing. I felt like there was still something to explore.

I did a different production with a different director and Bill Pullman. Oleanna­ - the one you saw - we were doing right after Bourne Identity or right after it came out.