Top 40 Julia Stiles Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Make yourself useful, not just on a day to day basis, but as a lifetime thing.”

— Julia Stiles

2. “Yoga has stopped me from destroying my joints after running. It slows me down. My brain and body can go into overdrive – yoga teaches me to focus on the moment and not get ahead of myself.”

— Julia Stiles

3. “I always feel like a goofy little kid.”

— Julia Stiles

4. “I like analyzing human behavior. It’s complex. That’s what keeps me going.”

— Julia Stiles

5. “Seeing other people in pain causes me pain.”

— Julia Stiles

6. “I’ve really turned a corner recently in terms of not taking work too seriously, so it is much easier for me to not take my work home.”

— Julia Stiles

7. “I think that ultimately I just have to be myself. You know, I don’t do anything that outlandish anyway.”

— Julia Stiles

8. “Theater is like going to the gym for actors.”

— Julia Stiles

9. “I’m not good at keeping secrets. If I’m entrusted with a secret from a friend, I can do that because I’m a good friend, but I don’t like having secrets, it makes me nervous.”

— Julia Stiles

10. “I took the role of Ophelia in Hamlet because she is so naive, loving, and innocent.”

— Julia Stiles

11. “Of course my family and friends are incredibly valuable to me. They keep me sane, they teach me things and I love spending time with them. I think that ranking what you value is a sort of western and linear way of looking at things.”

— Julia Stiles

12. “It’s not my job to critique the writing. I’m there to serve it. I had to figure out a way to make it work.”

— Julia Stiles

13. “I always loved how people like Jon Voight and Laurence Olivier shocked you every time they came on-screen. They were so different each time. That’s what I hope to do with acting – be the chameleon and not get stuck in a type.”

— Julia Stiles

14. “I’m going to Columbia University but I’m trying to keep that low-profile because I don’t want weird people following me there. I want the experience of normal college life.”

— Julia Stiles

15. “Yoga has stopped me from destroying my joints after running. It slows me down.”

— Julia Stiles

16. “I think I was born an artist. But the key is that I have a mom that encouraged and supported my artistic side. She still has the stick-figure drawings framed.”

— Julia Stiles

17. “I used to struggle a lot with dwelling on how the day at work was, and I would dwell on my performance. Now, I’m like, “Well, that’s over and done with, and I can’t control the outcome, so move on.” I just remember that it’s entertainment I am making.”

— Julia Stiles

18. “I met this homeless man who had never owned a shirt in his life. He had taken his pants and worn them as a shirt and I thought it was so creative. He was liberated from the conventions of fashion.”

— Julia Stiles

19. “In my worst moments, I try to think about loving instead of hating. Creation versus destruction, know what I’m sayin’?”

— Julia Stiles

20. “My regular school didn’t know what to do with me!”

— Julia Stiles

21. “I am a big fan of horror movies but I had never thought that I had wanted to act in one because I don’t think that actors get to do much in them. They’re usually just reacting.”

— Julia Stiles

22. “I think women get caught up too much in having a plan – ‘I’m going to get married at this age I’m going to have a kid at this age’ – and then they just try to find a guy who will fit into that picture. I don’t want my life to be based on that.”

— Julia Stiles

23. “I know it sounds earnest, but I do really feel in my bones that acting is just a small part of the equation when you are making a movie. The director really is in charge. Actors are as important or unimportant as the rest of the people around them.”

— Julia Stiles

24. “I tend to gravitate toward the more powerful roles. As opposed to the doe-eyed girl who bats her eyelashes and runs around in towels, you now what I mean? Because that kind of makes me want to vomit.”

— Julia Stiles

25. “Theater makes working in movies or TV seem like a cake-walk.”

— Julia Stiles

26. “I am forever a romantic. I try to bring that into my work. I try not to be fooled by romance. Or work.”

— Julia Stiles

Featured in: Romance Quotes

27. “Sometimes I have these abstract ideas and then lose track of myself.”

— Julia Stiles

28. “So I am happy to have fans, especially if it enables me to keep working. And I am really grateful when people respond to my work.”

— Julia Stiles

29. “I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn’t have actresses then.”

— Julia Stiles

30. “I wear everything from hip-hop baggy pants to beautiful Armani dresses. I also like to mix vintage clothing with designer pieces.”

— Julia Stiles

31. “Education is huge for me. I went to public school until I turned thirteen, and was lucky enough to afford college once I became successful as an actress.”

— Julia Stiles

32. “Fundamentally women and men are different.”

— Julia Stiles

33. “I worked regularly from very early on, and some of it was probably a bit premature.”

— Julia Stiles

34. “There are a handful of actors who sustain interest because it’s exciting to watch them get better at what they do. I want to be one of those actors.”

— Julia Stiles

35. “I am forever grateful that I got some training in the theater – it reduces performance anxiety.”

— Julia Stiles

36. “I pretty much grew up in public.”

— Julia Stiles

37. “If I’m gong out to a club I like to have fun with it. I’ll use blue or red sparkly eyeliners and glittery eye shadows. Then I’ll put on some blue mascara. I focus on the eyes.”

— Julia Stiles

38. “As an actor, you’re only one little piece of the puzzle; you’re fulfilling someone else’s vision. If you’re involved earlier on, you’re kind of creating your own.”

— Julia Stiles

39. “It’s fun to stay at the Y! M! C! A!”

— Julia Stiles

40. “It’s actually really great to be a student and an actor, because I get to do this job that I love, then just when I think my head might explode, I get to go to school where they don’t really care about what magazine cover I’m on.”

— Julia Stiles

41. “Being an actor is looked at like a prolonged game of dress-up. America puts movie stars on pedestals. In college, it’s the flip side. I sometimes have to justify my job to my professors because they’re focused on intellect and ideas.”

— Julia Stiles

42. “I never think of myself as an actor who takes work home with them.”

— Julia Stiles

43. “The only thing that gets me through any type of pain, emotional or physical, is to make it worthwhile by putting it into my work.”

— Julia Stiles

44. “We can become very short-sighted in terms of objectives. The first thing to go during times of economic crisis and budget cuts is funding for things that are essential and not-quantifiable, like the arts. Save Big Bird.”

— Julia Stiles

45. “Even after such milestones as Kathryn Bigelow winning an Oscar, there still seem to be few women in leadership roles.”

— Julia Stiles