When Julia Stiles read the script for 10 Things I Hate About You, she fell in love.

Not with Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), the bad boy with a heart of gold who would become her onscreen partner in the high school romantic comedy. But with Kat Stratford, the heroine whom Stiles immediately felt “desperate” to play. Never before had the then-17-year-old read a female part that wasn’t sickly saccharine and bubbly, but was complex and nuanced.

“I was an auditioning actor and mostly go out for commercials and they would tell me that I wasn’t bubbly enough,” Stiles has said. “They always thought I was angry so to read a part like Kat I was like, ‘Ah, this is perfect for me!’”

How Julia Stiles made a feminist statement on the set of 10 Things I Hate About You