Move over: Julia Stiles is taking the wheel | Arts & Entertainment

Denver-bound actor Julia Stiles likens the first two decades of her film career to a nice, long car trip.

It’s been a lovely drive. But when you’ve been in the passenger seat too long, she says, “eventually you might sort of doze off.”

After two decades riding shotgun, Stiles has taken the wheel. And she’s wide awake.

“There’s something very invigorating about being the one in the driver’s seat,” she said. “You’re very alert and very energized.”

Stiles, who “gave teenagers a good name,” as one journalist put it, in breakout roles in enduring films like “10 Things I Hate About You” and “Save the Last Dance,” has taken a big step forward this year by taking a big step back – behind the camera.

Stiles is making her directing debut with “Wish You Were Here,” based on a novel by Renée Carlino that impacted Stiles deeply when she first read it five years ago.

“I had been wanting to direct a film for a really long time, but I couldn’t find the right story,” Stiles told the Denver Gazette. “I couldn’t find something that moved me, or that I thought was at all commercially viable, or that I could get financed.”

That is, until actor friend Gabby Kono-Abdy sent her Carlino’s best-selling novel about a directionless woman who is about to turn 30 when she meets both her true love and an insurmountable obstacle.

“I fell in love with the book,” Stiles said. “I had a visceral reaction to it. I was laughing. I was crying. I was laughing and crying at the same time – and I could totally visualize it as a film. And that was the catalyst for me to go, ‘OK, now’s the time. This is the one.’”

Stiles directed, co-wrote and co-produced the film with a nearly all-female financing team that she put together. For that trifecta of creative entrepreneurship, alongside a varied body of acting work that includes “The Bourne Identity” franchise, “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Dexter,” Stiles will be in Denver on May 30 to accept Denver Film’s 2025 Women+Film Barbara Bridges Inspiration Award at the Denver Botanic Gardens. That’s a major fundraising luncheon, followed by the Denver premiere screening of “Wish You Were Here” in the Gardens’ Sturm Auditorium.

Among those in the audience seeing the film for the first time will be Denver’s continually ascending music star Nathaniel Rateliffe, who has two songs featured on Stiles’ soundtrack along with his band, The Night Sweats. Stiles discovered Rateliff through his 2016 album “Live at Red Rocks,” and now considers him a friend.

“Nathaniel is an amazing musician and a proud Denverite,” said Stiles, whose super-cool soundtrack also includes songs from Andrew Bird, Phosphorescent, Caitlin Rose and others. “The two songs that are featured in ‘Wish You Were Here’ (“You Worry Me,” co-written with  Luke Mossman, and “And It’s Still Alright”) had been in my head on repeat for the whole five years it took to get the movie made. I begged him to let me put his music in the film, he said yes, and I’m very grateful for it.”

It didn’t take much begging, Rateliff clarified. “Julia and I have been friends for quite some time,” he told the Denver Gazette. “I was excited to hear about her directorial debut, and I felt grateful that she wanted to use my songs in this emotive film.”

Variety calls Stiles’ debut effort, which stars Isabelle Fuhrman, Mena Massoud, Jennifer Grey and Kelsey Grammer, “a clear-eyed and emotionally authentic romance.”

And a tragic one. The love story, Stiles hopes, “is hopefully going to give you what I would call a good cry.” Even still, she added, “I always want people to walk away from the film with a feeling of hope.

“It definitely stirs up emotions and thoughts about mortality and separating from the person that you really love,” she said. “But I don’t want people to leave in despair. I want them to feel like love and loss is a beautiful part of life.”

Denver audience feels the full force of empowering Emmy-winning actor as she accepts inspiration award

Stiles’ trip to Denver on May 30 will be her first to the Mile High City – ever. She says she is humbled to be following in the footsteps of Rita Moreno, Hannah Waddingham and other icons as recent winners of the Inspiration Award, which kicks off Denver Film’s three-day 2025 Women+Film Festival at the Sie FilmCenter.

“It’s an honor to be asked to attend,” said Stiles, who is especially looking forward to seeing the grounds of the Denver Botanical Gardens for the first time. “Those are obviously some very powerful, talented women, and I’m all for anything that boosts and supports women in film.”

Stiles will be addressing a room filled with lovers of film and specifically, women in film. Whatever words of inspiration the Inspiration Award winner has to say will be of keen interest to this group. 

“I think my message will be that women have had a strong presence in front of the camera since the inception of film,” Stiles said. “But more and more, we’re finding ourselves having opportunities behind the camera – and I think that needs to continue, and we need to support that.”

But the road to gender equality in the film industry continues to be a slow slog, at least behind the camera. In 2024, women accounted for 15.4% of all movie directors in the U.S., according to an April 2 report published by Statista.com. For female writers, it’s only 22%. The good news: Women actors accounted for about 48% of all leading roles in 2024, up from just 25.6% in 2011.

“I think leading by example is important,” Stiles said of her own career trajectory. “I never would have thought I’d be given permission to direct a movie without knowing that there were other women who had done it before me.

“Not necessarily because I am a woman. Because I am an actress. Seeing other actresses stepping behind the camera was important to me. I needed to see that example to know that it was possible. And I’d like to continue that for other women.”

Stiles assembled a mostly female producing team from Phiphen Pictures, she said, not so much to make a gender statement but instead because these particular women, who had previously produced a Stiles-starring film called “The God Committee,” “really get stuff done,” she said.

But co-writing, and co-producing, and co-directing, upped the personal stakes considerably.

“I still love acting –  especially when you’re working with a director you really collaborate well with,” she said. “But I started to want to be doing more than that. I wanted to not just be one little piece of the puzzle anymore. I wanted to be thinking about where to point the camera and what the music is going to be and what the color is going to look like.”

At a time when the film industry is facing multiple challenges that are keeping attendance at bricks-and-mortar cinemas hovering at about 50% of what it was before the pandemic, small, independent films like “Wish You Were Here” face an uphill battle to be seen. Ironically, the emergence of streaming, which is draining movie theaters, is both the problem and the solution for a small film fighting for attention. But the industry has become unrecognizable from when Stiles started.

“I have so many things to say about this,” Stiles said. “I have learned from my own experience how powerful the longevity of a single film can be. For example, in the ’90s and the ‘Aughties,’ it was all about what’s No. 1 at the box office on opening weekend. That was the be-all or end-all for your film.”

In January, “Wish You Were Here” had a very limited release in about 100 theaters nationwide (none of them in Colorado). The No. 1 film that weekend, “One of Them Days,” was released in 2,675 theaters, grossing $12 million.

In 1999, Stiles’ “10 Things I Hate About You,” which cost $30 million to make, opened with $8.3 million and eventually grossed $54 million. Two years later, the Shakespearean-inspired “Save the Last Dance,” which cost $13 million to make, opened with $23.4 million and ended at $132 million.

“But even now, 25 years later, I’ve had the privilege of being in films that people still rent and want to watch and talk about,” she said. “And that’s a huge honor. That’s how you realize that your work means something.

“And that’s what I hope for ‘Wish You Were Here.’ Because this is a small indie movie. If 10 years from now, somebody tells me they’ve watched it and it meant something to them, I will say, ‘That’s amazing.’”

All food for thought for the curated conversation Stiles will be having on May 30 with CBS4’s Mekialaya White at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Last year, Waddingham was asked to demonstrate her now iconic and female-empowering “Rebecca Welton Power Pose,” as introduced on an episode of “Ted Lasso.” Waddingham was soon happily leading a packed room of mostly women in a power pose, accompanied by a group cleansing scream.

Not Stiles’ style? Never say never.

“Oh my God, that sounds amazing,” Stiles said. “Should we make that an annual tradition?”