About the cast: Julia Stiles

Julia Stiles (Kat Stratford) made a distinctive impression on the 1998 Sundance Film Festival by starring in Wicked, the latest film from acclaimed director Michael Steinberg (The Waterdance, Bodies Rest & Motion).

In addition, she co-authored a script that was chosen as one of twelve scripts to be included in the Sundance Institute's Writers Lab. The script entitled The Anarchist's Daughter is about a troubled New York teenager who takes care of her disintegrating family and discovers the father she never met.

She recently completed filming Hamlet for Miramax. Stiles plays Ophelia opposite Ethan Hawke in the title role for director Michael Almareda's update of the classic play. Stiles is currently shooting the independent film O with Mekhi Pfeiffer and Josh Hartnett. This contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Othello sets the original story in the realm of college basketball. This spring she will begin shooting Down To You with Freddie Prinze, Jr. for Miramax.

She was last seen in the NBC miniseries The '60s from producer Lynda Obst. Before that she starred opposite Ellen Barkin and Oprah Winfrey in the ABC/Harpo Films special Before Women Had Wings. She also starred as a young unwed mother opposite Isabella Rossellini in a critically praised episode of the CBS drama Chicago Hope.

Her additional film credits include I Love You, I Love You Not with Claire Danes, Wide Awake with Rosie O'Donnell and in the late Alan J. Pakula's The Devil's Own starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt for Sony Pictures.

Stiles began her career on the New York stage, appearing in a number of plays at the La Mama Theater and the Kitchen Theater, including Everyday Newt Burman, Matthew: School of Life, and most recently in The Sandalwood Box from playwright Mac Welmann.

She resides in Manhattan where she is at the top of her senior class at the Professional Children's School.