Mike Coppola/Getty Images for The Gotham Film & Media Institute
“What’s funny is that I did everything as a director that I swore I would never do to my actors.”
Now that Julia Stiles has directed her first feature film, Wish You Were Here, she sees directors in a whole new light. “I almost wanted to call some directors that I had worked with and be like, ‘I’m so sorry that I was annoyed with you when you told me to do that thing.'” Best known for acting, Stiles knew she needed to adapt this novel for film when she read it. “The book broke my heart but also made me laugh. It felt like it had such a good spirit to it, and I’m a romantic at heart.” The film follows a young woman swept up in a new romance only to learn her partner is terminally ill. While she says she ran “in the other direction” of making the film too saccharine, she didn’t let a cynical voice fully take over. “There is something really important about showing how much this girl takes care of him, and that it’s OK to be kind and loving.” Now Stiles says directing has made her a better actor. “I think I realized that if you trust your director, and I mean really trust that person and believe in their vision, you can throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.”
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Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.
What made you want to make this your feature film directorial debut?
Directing is something that I have been wanting to do my whole career, or at least in the last 10 years, and I was actively looking for the right story. Directing is a lot more of a commitment than acting. You work on a movie as an actress for maybe at the most three months, but especially nowadays, films are a lot quicker. But as a director, it’s at least a year of your life, or sometimes multiple years. In the case of Wish You Were Here, I was sent the book four or five years ago, and it took that long for me to do the adaptation, then to get producers on board and get it financed and get it cast. And then you’re finally in production, and that’s a year of filming and then post-production. So it has to be a story that will really stick with you and grow and be interesting to you years later.
I loved Wish You Were Here. The book broke my heart but also made me laugh. It felt like it had such a good spirit to it, something that is very hopeful, and I’m a romantic at heart, so I definitely gravitated toward that. I sat down to write the adaptation—it was kind of peak COVID time, or 2021 when we were just starting to go back to work—and in the years since then, it has grown into an even more powerful story to me that I feel is more and more relevant. At the time, I kept being drawn to the idea that we really, really crave connection with another person, or other people in a more organic way than what you find on the internet. And I thought, there’s a lot of movies or stories like this, people who fall in love and for whatever reason they can’t be together. In this case, it’s because we find out that the guy is dying. But there’s also the romantic comedy elements of it, where everybody in life is pressuring her to find a partner and be on a dating app. And as much as she tries to do that, it doesn’t quite live up to this connection that she has very spontaneously with another person.
Watching it, the film Terms of Endearment came to mind, where the story blended this heavy emotion with humor and light in a way you don’t see often. Did you watch any other films for inspiration? And how do you not make it overly melodramatic?
Terms of Endearment is such a good movie. Thank you for reminding me of that. And you’re right, the saccharine element of or the potential for a story like this to be saccharine, was very much on my mind. I would run in the other direction. I wouldn’t give away too much of the movie, but there are scenes in the movie where I would always have my radar up going, “Oh, this could so easily become cheesy.” And I think that I’ve fought really hard to push it in the other direction by being as honest and realistic as I could be. But also, there were times when I was like, “Wait, don’t let the cynical voice take over,” because there is something really important about showing how much this girl takes care of him, and that it’s okay to be kind and loving toward another person, and believing in true love or believing in love at first sight, believing in the potential of a love affair or the potential of a soulmate is okay, and I think we need that in these times.
What’s funny is that I think that the movie started off as one thing for me when I read the book, and then was adapting it, and then as we were in production, and then even through editing, it kind of took on a life of its own. There were things that I discovered more, or gravitated toward more, that kind of came to the surface. The idea that our time on this earth is very precious, and oftentimes when you are first dating somebody, or you first meet someone, the idea of love at first sight, you’re really falling in love with the idea of what it would be like to be with them, and you’re sort of imagining a future with them, or potential with them. I’m married, and I have three kids, so I think about this a lot. Marriage is actually not marriage, but love is actually an act. It’s something that you have to actively do, and there was something so heartbreaking to me about Wish You Were Here. They tell this story of looking back on a lifetime together, as though they’re an older couple, but they’re kind of robbed of the opportunity to have that, which chokes me up.
And that whole idea of “life is short” is such a strong place to start a story. It really gives it a direction.
Another powerful turning point in the film for me that I think I seized on—it was a little bit more minor in the book—I seized on it as kind of a big turning point, [and] something I related to and I felt like other people can relate to, even if they’re not sick, is when he says, “I can’t just sit here and wait to die. I can’t just spend the rest of this precious time that I have in these four walls of a hospital room.” That kind of fight that he has is very compelling to me.
And as the director, you have the freedom to really focus on those areas of the book that could get looked over otherwise.
You also have the cast and the crew and everybody, the whole team around you, trying to help you realize your vision, or turn words on paper into a moving picture. I hired really, really great department heads, production designer, cinematographer and wonderful actors, too. And so a big lesson, for me was like, “Okay, you have to open your eyes and see what they’re bringing to it, and be open to that collaboration,” because then it becomes even bigger and better than you could have imagined. I had worked with Isabelle Fuhrman, the lead actress in the movie, who is in literally every scene and carries the film. I had worked with her on a movie called Orphan. When I was actually working with her on that film, I was doing the adaptation of Wish You Were Here. And I go to set every day, and I watch her as a 23-year-old at the time, acting as though she’s a believable 11-year-old, and I was floored. I was like, “She has to be my Charlotte. She’s got to be the Charlotte in this movie.” So I was really lucky to have such a talented cast and crew around me.
Considering the amount of acting you’ve done, did anything surprise you as a director? Did the business side of it surprise you?
So first of all, one of the things that to me is the challenge of being a director, but also I found the most rewarding part of being a director, you have to be really, really good at managing a budget, managing your time with your shooting, because time is money. That used muscles in my brain that I don’t really use as an actress. And it can be totally frustrating, this was a very low-budget movie, too. I would always say, like anybody can make a movie if they’re given all the time and the money in the world. The pressure part of the job of being a director is to be creative, but also to be able to work with the constraints that you’re given. And I actually think sometimes some of the best changes come from those constraints. Without giving anything away, there’s a major change that I made to the script that is not in the book, and it was because of our budget and because we didn’t really have time to shoot in this particular location. And so I had to think of, “How can I simplify it? How can I condense it?” And to me, it actually makes the whole movie. It was something that I thought of three weeks before we started shooting.
Those financial constraints can inspire some real creativity.
I called a director that I had [Doug Liman], the director of The Bourne Identity. I called him before we started shooting because I needed some advice. And I knew that he would have very sound advice. I remember complaining about our low budget, and he was like, “Remember this time, because when they start giving you more money, they start telling you what to do.” And so I was actually really lucky that I was given a lot of creative freedom from the producers and from the distributor.
Considering your past work as an actor, does that influence how you cast a film?
First of all, I didn’t audition anybody because I can’t stand auditions. I was looking at actors whose work I was already familiar with, or [that] have an extensive body of work or that I had worked with before. Casting is funny, because I remember early on in the process, my manager was like, “You can’t be involved in those conversations, because you’re going to hear what they say.” It’s so humiliating, in some ways, being an actor, if you knew how people talked about you. That’s so cynical, but I was very sensitive to how we talk about actors as people. The casting was really fun. I was just so thrilled with every single actor that ended up in my movie.
What’s funny is that I did everything as a director that I swore I would never do to my actors. I almost wanted to call some directors that I had worked with and be like, “I”m so sorry that I was annoyed with you when you told me to do that thing.” There were certain things like, you have these lofty ideas of you’re gonna go on set and you’re gonna talk about your motivation and your intention and the interior feelings, and then it comes down to, “Okay, go again. More happy, more sad. Just do it again. Faster. Just do it faster. No, don’t do that.” Because you just don’t have time. You have to get to the point. I swore I would never. It used to really bug me when directors would come in and give you a note before you even rehearsed or before you even did the first take. And so I was always like, “I’m gonna give my actors the freedom to just show me what their interpretation is. I’ll give them a first take, and then I’ll come in and I’ll give notes, but I’m not gonna micromanage everything.” And I’d be like, “Okay, action. No, cut, go again.”
So now having directed a film like this, has it changed you as an actor?
Oh, totally, totally. I think I realized that if you trust your director, and I mean really trust that person and believe in their vision, you can throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. And it’s actually better to do that, because then they can decide in the editing room what your performance is like. I definitely see what the magic of editing can do. That freed you up to feel a lot less worried and self-conscious as an actress. Although when we were in the editing room, especially when we were doing the color correction part, where you’re really, really watching every visual image, and in the editing room, when you’re watching all the moments before action, and all the moments from cut to when they actually turn the camera off, the moments where actors don’t think that they’re being watched, or when they sneeze or they yawn or whatever. I was horrified and thinking, “I’m never gonna step in front of the camera again.” [laughs]
It does sound like this whole experience really was a new direction for you. It’s exciting to see what you’ll do next.
I loved it, I loved it, I’m totally hooked. It was so exhausting, at least in production, when we were filming, but it’s so energizing, too. I’ve never felt more energized. Even running on fumes in terms of sleep, I loved going to work every day. I loved being in the editing room, because that’s really where the the art is, I think, where you’re shaping a story. Yeah, I loved it.
We, as viewers, have been with you since you were younger. And in many ways we’ve evolved with you. It’s been exciting to see the evolution of your work and the growth in maturity of your work and the roles and projects you have taken. Was that an intentional thing, choosing projects that matched where you are in your life?
When you start out, you just want to be hired. In my twenties, Save the Last Dance and 10 Things I Hate About You had come out, and so I was getting more work sent to me, and I was just kind of like, “Oh, that seems interesting.” Or I would listen to my agents, or whatever, saying you should do that movie. Or I’d go like, “Oh, hey, I want to go to that country.” And I think now I’m way more thoughtful actually, I have more of an understanding of the process of making a movie to when it actually comes out, or TV show. And I gravitate toward working with directors that inspire me and stories that inspire me. I think about, what am I gonna enjoy going to work every day? But then there’s also the business of the industry, which is, do people see you in those kinds of roles? I could say that I want to do comedy till the cows come home, because I want to just go to work and laugh every day, [but] it takes a lot to get people to think of me not as the FBI agent. So I’m starting to understand the business side of the industry a little bit more.
