Julia Stiles Quotes

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

I pretty much grew up in public.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In my worst moments, I try to think about loving instead of hating. Creation versus destruction, know what I'm sayin'?

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

My grandmother took me to a lot of theater. 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.

I've always been fascinated with the idea of people paying for sex and what goes on with that and why that happens.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I think I was born an artist. But the key is that I have a mom that encouraged and supported my artistic side. She still has the stick-figure drawings framed.

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

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 am forever a romantic. I try to bring that into my work. I try not to be fooled by romance. Or work.

I always feel like a goofy little kid.

Fundamentally women and men are different.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

It's not my job to critique the writing. I'm there to serve it. I had to figure out a way to make it work.

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.

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.

Seeing other people in pain causes me pain.

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

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.

I never think of myself as an actor who takes work home with them.

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.

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

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'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.

The thing with the Bourne movies is that they're so big in scope and the production value is so high and it takes so much organization.

I'm not good at keeping secrets. If I'm entrusted with a secret from a friend, I can do that because I'm a good friend, but I don't like having secrets, it makes me nervous.

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.