Julia Stiles

In 2000 she joined the ‘Columbia University’ and in 2005 she earned a bachelor’s degree in English. In 2010 the ‘Columbia College Alumni Association’ honoured her along with four other alumni with the ‘John Jay Award’ for their professional achievements.

She dated actor, director and filmmaker, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and also artist Jonathan Cramer and from July 2011 she started dating actor David Harbour.

She is a self proclaimed feminist and has penned down several essays on the subject for ‘The Guardian’, a British newspaper.

She was born on March 28, 1981 in New York City to John O'Hara and Judith Newcomb Stiles as the eldest of three children. Her mother is a potter and her parents owned a pottery business in Greenwich Village.

She was a bright child and at the age of six she served at her family business handling the register while interacting with customers. Her love for theatre developed as a child while she accompanied her parents to watch different plays and was especially fascinated by the Shakespearean plays.

Her love for writing also happened during her childhood when she developed a habit of writing letters to her parents for any of her requirements. Moving forward she wrote a letter to Ed Koch, the then mayor of New York City, when she was eleven, proposing him to keep more dustbins in the streets. She also wrote a letter to the director of ‘La MaMa Theatre Company’ that fetched her first stage work within months, when she was only eleven years of age.

Though she did not take her academic education forward she joined ‘New York's Professional Children School’ and took modern dance lessons to develop herself in the field of arts so as to pursue a career in the entertainment business.

Her journey in acting started with theatres working with the ‘La MaMa Theatre Company’ at eleven years of age. While she was twelve, she worked with ‘Kitchen Theatre’ and performed in the plays ‘The Sandlewood Box’ and ‘Matthew: School of Life’ and also did several commercials.

Her initial works during 1993 to 1998 include plays with the ‘Ridge Theatre’ group enacting the works of John Moran.

She made her television debut in 1993 with the series ‘Ghostwriter’ where she essayed the role of Erica Dansby in six episodes. During mid 1990s to 2000s she did single episodes of other TV series including ‘Promised Land’ (1996), ‘Chicago Hope’ (1997), ‘Punk’d’ (2004) and ‘The City’ (2009) and two episodes of ‘Saturday Night Live’ (2001).

She treaded the big screen after the mid-90s with a small part in the film ‘I Love You, I Love You Not’ (1996). Moving on she played Bridget O'Meara in ‘The Devil’s Own’ (1997) starring along with Harrison Ford.

After a couple of films she landed up the lead role of Ellie Christianson in the 1998 film ‘Wicked’ and earned the ‘Best Actress Award’ at the ‘Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’. Although the film was never screened in any theatre, she received positive response from critics and was noticed by the casting agents.

She has been active regarding several social and political causes. She is a proponent of the ‘Habitat for Humanity and Amnesty International’ and worked for it while the construction of housing in Costa Rica was conducted.

She was also involved with the ‘Amnesty International’ in increasing awareness of the hard situation of the unaccompanied juveniles who face immigration detention. Her trip to Leesport, Pennsylvania, to witness the situation at the ‘Berks County Youth Center’ was shown by Marie Claire in January 2004.