\n<\/p>\n
Larisa Oleynik, who played Kat\u2019s kid sister, Bianca, recalls rewatching \u201c10 Things\u201d recently. \u201cThe thing I love so much \u2014 and I\u2019m going to get emotional \u2014 is, she\u2019s so earnest,\u201d Oleynik said. \u201cShe\u2019s so genuine. And to me, that is the most beautiful thing about Julia\u2019s portrayal of that character. It is coming from a deeply heartfelt, vulnerable, sensitive, insanely intelligent place,\u201d she said, while adding: \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone else would have been able to be that real.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stiles started acting as a 12-year-old in New York\u2019s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, but had a hard time finding her place in film. \u201cI was a 17-year-old girl, auditioning for romantic comedies and commercials and TV shows and always being told, \u2018You\u2019re too serious,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cYou know, \u2018Smile. You\u2019re too angsty.\u2019\u201d That changed when she read the \u201c10 Things\u201d script. \u201cIt was the first time that I had read a character in a teenage romantic comedy that spoke to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As Oleynik remembers it, Stiles was <\/em>that girl, \u201ca cool, downtown New Yorker\u201d who, though only a few months Oleynik\u2019s senior, \u201cseemed so much more mature.\u201d Before the \u201c10 Things\u201d table read, Oleynik had gone to Fred Segal to buy her real-life junior prom dress, an indigo slip that wasn\u2019t all that dissimilar to the prom dress Kat wears in the movie<\/a>. \u201cI really, <\/em>really wanted her approval,\u201d Oleynik said. \u201cI remember thinking, if Julia approves, I can go<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n IN 2002, ACCORDING TO THE<\/strong> self-appointed cultural anthropologists at Newsweek magazine, there were exactly three types of teenage girls in America. You could be an Alpha: a blonde who loved cheerleading, worshiped Gwyneth and Vogue, and managed to be \u201cboth bitchy and nice.\u201d You could be a Beta, which was basically an aspiring Alpha; Betas reportedly took diet pills as after-school snacks, spent after-prom at a motel, and were, tragically, brunette. Or you could be a part of a rising cohort of Gamma Girls: \u201cBuffy the Vampire Slayer\u201d-watching, flare-jeans-wearing freethinkers who were \u201cobsessed with Shakespeare,\u201d dated the \u201cclass smartass,\u201d and subscribed to Jane <\/em>magazine. The poster child for the Gamma Girl: Julia Stiles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n