As Julia Stiles gears up for her directorial debut with “Wish You Were Here,” she’s splitting her time with another project she’s kept under wraps.
She told the New York Times she was “a bundle of emotions” directing her first movie as she welcomed her third child, now 5 months old.
The “10 Things I Hate About You” actor did not reveal the name or sex of her baby, saying of this recent pregnancy, “I didn’t really talk about it.” Stiles also shares sons Strummer, 6, and Arlo, 2, with husband Preston Cook, whom she married in 2017.
Though she stayed mum about her newborn, she reflected on how motherhood had surprisingly been “great training” for directing.
“You have to think 10 steps ahead but also be in the present moment. You have to be good at time management. You have to be sensitive to people’s needs and guide them, but also hold a boundary,” Stiles said in the New York Times interview.
Stiles wrapped production on “Wish You Were Here” in late February, as Deadline reported. The film is based on the Renée Carlino bestseller and was also adapted for the screen by Stiles. The second-chance romance follows Charlotte, an unlucky-in-love waitress who reunites with a man she believes ghosted her after an idyllic first date — only to find out he is terminally ill.
Stiles told the NYT that she’d been dreaming of a directorial role for years.
“It took a long time to find the right story to tell,” she said.
This year not only marks Stiles’ directing debut but also the 25th anniversary of what may be her best-known role: Kat Stratford in the teen film “10 Things I Hate About You,” loosely based on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.”
She reflected on the well-beloved film in a 2017 interview with The Times.
“That was my first big role in a movie, so I was thrilled beyond belief,” Stiles said. “I just loved that role. It spoke to me as an angsty teenager and a feminist. I’d never seen a role like that for girls in movies, especially pop teen movies.
“We all had so much fun together,” she said of the cast, which included Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Larisa Oleynik. “We were teenagers out in Seattle on our own for a summer in a movie where you didn’t have to cry all the time. It was a delight. I think it’s really special that people do still watch that movie.”
