Julia Stiles
Interview By: Stephen Snart
StephenSnart@TheCinemaSource.com
After successfully steering clear of horror films since the start of her career, Julia Stiles finally commits to a horror film that is heavy on the psychological scares and light on the meaningless violence. Join us as she discusses eerie coincidences on set, working with the legendary Mia Farrow and graduating from Columbia University.
In 1999, Julia Stiles established herself as one of the most talented young actresses of her generation with the touching and smart comedy, 10 Things I Hate About You. Given the trend that was going on around that time, one might be inclined to assume she got her start in horror movies, as was the case with her contemporaries Sarah Michelle Geller, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Neve Campbell. But instead of slashers and splatter fests, Stiles chose projects like the aforementioned 10 Things, Hamlet and O, three films who not coincidentally have their roots in Shakespearean texts. It is only now that she is 25 years-old and has 20 films under her belt that she decided to headline a horror film. And The Omen is not your standard, hokey, dead-teenager flick for that matter.
'I actually never thought I would want to be in a horror film because when it's shock horror, it's all about the violence. Actors don't really get to do much; they're sort of just reacting,' explains Stiles on why she put off her horror debut for so long. 'It's easy to see violence. You just turn on the news.' With The Omen, the emphasis is less on brutal imagery and more on getting the audience to relate to the characters dealing with a situation of unimaginable turmoil. 'I don't think the movie is just there for shock value. There's something deeper psychologically going on with these characters. I think that hits a deeper truth.'
Part of the reason Stiles was eager to star in the remake was her reverence for the original, directed by Richard Donner in 1976. 'I think that a sign of a good horror film is if it lasts thirty years later. There was a scene where Lee Remick tells her husband that she needs to see a psychiatrist and it's so chilling! There's so much said and [yet] almost nothing is said. That meant to me that there's something going on psychologically.'
In the 2006 version, Stiles plays Katherine Thorn, the role originally inhabited by Remick. Katherine is the husband to Liev Schreiber's Robert Thorn, a United States ambassador currently situated in London. Katherine has to find a way to deal with the possibility that their son, Damien, might just be the antichrist. 'Her biggest problem is actually not her suspicions about her son but her own self-doubt. The hardest thing for a Mother to be able to come to terms with would be to be afraid of your own son or think there's something wrong with him. She suppresses that for so long and that's what ultimately makes her a little nutty.'
In a film that is filled to the brim with frightening imagery, the scariest element is arguably Katherine's horrific, dream sequences. Comprised of split-second cuts, ambient noises and startling figures, these brief scenes are an unforgiving attack on the senses. Stiles is very excited to be associated with this unforgettable aspect of the film, 'I was so glad he added the dream sequences! Nightmare sequences can be tricky because they can get too out there. But I think John [Moore] is really good at using images that are in our collective conscious, things that really recur in dreams.' Staying true to form, Stiles is quick to comment on their psychological value, 'It's also a window into what my character is seeing. She says when she closes her eyes, she sees grotesque scenes. It allows you to see what she's seeing. In terms of her progression, I wanted to show her in the beginning when she's sane and optimistic, has a loving relationship with her husband and always wants to be a Mother. Later when things don't go to plan, it's that much more heartbreaking.'
The stunning young actress confesses warily that she experienced similar visions during the production, 'I got to Prague and had horrible nightmares everyday when we were shooting. I could hardly sleep. My apartment was right near one of the oldest cemeteries in the world. I was scared at every corner. My preparation was totally inadvertent and unintentional,' she adds with a quiet laugh. 'In retrospect, I was definitely just psyching myself out.'
Stiles' onset scares follow in the grand tradition of classic Horror films like the original The Omen and The Exorcist, productions that were plagued with mysterious behind-the-scenes happenings. 'Mia [Farrow] told me all these stories about Rosemary's Baby! I was like, 'Be quiet! I don't want to hear it!'' While not quite on the same dire level as the deaths connected with The Poltergeist films, The Omen still had a couple of bizarre, albeit slightly pedestrian, occurrences to its name, 'There was footage that was destroyed in the laboratory or came back with smudges just like what happens in the film.' Stiles admits that perhaps she was susceptible to making a big deal out of these kinds of things, 'I was open to it, I was ready and I took everything very seriously. People like Liev dismissed it as coincidence.' However, Stiles recounts one story that holds enough significance to spook even the most strong-willed of nonbelievers. 'The first scene that I was shooting is the scene when Liev hands me the child, Damien. We were shooting next to a Church and of course we couldn't shoot the scene because the Church bells were ringing incessantly, which is explainable, except that they kept going and when they started was six minutes after six o'clock! I'm not kidding! Call it a coincidence, I don't know, but I was aware of those things!'
Returning to the subject of the Rosemary's Baby star, Mia Farrow, Stiles informs that this is actually her second pairing with the famed actress. 'It was bizarre, Mia and I did a play together in New York where we played Mother and Daughter, and then two weeks later we were in Prague shooting a scene where she was trying to kill me! It was confusing to say the least.' It appears as if Mia Farrow has donned the role of Mother to Stiles off the stage as well. 'I learned so much from watching her. She's really mastered facial expressions. She has such an angelic, comforting demeanor and then at the drop of a hat she can give you a cold, devilish stare. It's all fake but it's so believable.'
While Stiles is eager to make a return to the stage, she's resolved to waiting for the right play to come along, 'When you do something for months and months, day in and day out, it's got to be really good.' In the interim, she's set her sights on literary adaptation, 'I'm producing an adaptation of The Bell Jar, the Sylvia Plath novel. I found a writer to adapt it, she's doing the first draft right now, Killer Films is going to produce it [and] I would like to play Esther Greenwood.' The adaptation is an appropriate undertaken, seeing as she recently graduated from Columbia University with a degree in English Literature. 'Or how to be good at scrabble,' the intellectual beauty slyly muses. But as for right now, she's just excited to see The Omen in theaters, 'I'm really curious to see what audiences respond to. I know I was scared and riveted, which is odd because I knew what was going to happen but I got absorbed in the story.' It's a safe bet to say that Stiles will not be the only audience member riveted to the screen when The Omen hits theaters worldwide on June 6th, 2006.
