Doing it with Stiles

When Julia Stiles is a bit older she'll probably be the one who makes men think all the wrong thoughts, but right now she's still the high-school gal audiences adore and has ten films behind her to prove it.

But she's not to be pigeonholed as the teen star of films like Down To You and the currently showing State And Main. Three of those ten were revamped Shakespeares - 10 Things I Hate About You based on The Taming Of The Shrew, Ethan Hawke's modern-day Hamlet and Desdemona in O - and her latest, Save The Last Dance, is a controversial inter-racial love story between a white ballet student (Stiles) and a black hip-hop dancer, played by Sean Patrick Thomas (whose films include Cruel Intentions and Courage Under Fire).

Stiles plays the nice smalltown girl who ends up on the wrong side of the tracks when her mother dies. Thomas plays the gifted guy from the ghetto. The social impact their relationship causes is not the usual teen movie fare. And it's definitely not sanitised, Hollywood-style. 'I don't mind being seen as a fresh-faced young thing, but I don't think much fresh-facedness comes into Save The Last Dance,' says Stiles, who turned 20 this week, with a grounded calmness that belies her ability to erupt on screen. 'It might be billed as a dance movie but it brings up tough questions about class and race and society. I can certainly relate to them as I went to a school like the one in the film where I was one of a few white girls. I tried very hard to be a homegirl and act a lot tougher than I was. I know what my character had to go through.

'I grew up on films like Dirty Dancing and Flashdance and I think Save The Last Dance has got Generation X Flashdance elements, but it has a more redeeming storyline, more realistic characters and the social issues brought up are much more intriguing.'

Director Thomas Carter saw Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You. Apparently, he'd been having sleepless nights worrying about hiring an actress who could dance - he saw her table dance in 10 Things and shrieked, 'She's got rhythm!' and that was it.

On with her dancing shoes. 'Sean and I went into a month and a half of straight training - three hours of ballet, three hours of hip-hop every day. When we started shooting we began the choreography. I've been taking dancing lessons since I was little - ballet and then modern dance - and one of the reasons I wanted to do the film was to revisit ballet.'

Stiles, in jeans and trainers that look like they have pounded too many pavements, is one of those actors who can pass truly unnoticed off the patch, as she is the day we meet in London. She can also be utterly gorgeous, has modelled for Calvin Klein and presented at the Oscars this week, sparkling in (loaned) gear, although she assures me that most of the time she's just another New York student, studying at Columbia University. 'I haven't decided on a major yet, but I've pretty much narrowed it down to majoring in Latin American studies or English Literature. I adore literature but I've developed some weird obsession with Latin America. I love languages and I love to travel, but I don't like going places where I can't communicate. I feel like a tourist.

I'm very interested in Latin American culture and the way the United States relates to Latin America is really strange - a lot of seedy political things like drugs and kidnapping.

I went to Costa Rica twice to work on Habitat For Humanity, where they build houses for people. You volunteer and literally pick up a hammer and start nailing. I hammered and did everything. It was pure construction which I'd never known before, being a Manhattan girl. It's wonderful because you actually see how productive you can be. Now if I ever get my own home I could build my own shed. It would take a long time, but I'd know how to do it!'

Home is currently in the dormitory at Columbia during term-time and with her parents, young sister and brother in Manhattan when she's not away working on a film. She says she'd like there to be a guy on the scene and cheerfully admits to being very much on the look out. Her mother makes ceramics, mainly designed for galleries, and used to have a store in Greenwich Village. Her father, once a businessman in the metal trade, is now a school teacher in a mainly black part of Spanish Harlem. Julia describes them as quite Bohemian. 'I once called them hippies in an interview and they were quite pissed off. It suggested just dope and long hair to them. They were more politically active. They fought for equality and were protesters and went to rallies. They encouraged me to develop my confidence. When I was little I was always performing, dressing up. They didn't stop me when I was 11 and wrote to the head of the La Mama Theater requesting an audition.'

Within months she was performing in avant-garde plays, most of which she didn't understand. She soon began to get small parts in films, like Harrison Ford's daughter in The Devil's Own, and then a mini-series, The Sixties, which led to the lead in 10 Things I Hate About You opposite Heath Ledger, just as she was graduating from the Professional Children's School. 'I studied Shakespeare at school and I think it's only natural that they want to update him. He writes so timelessly. There's something about the classics that is missing in contemporary literature. Especially with tragedy. The Greek plays and Shakespeare follow the rules on drama - the tragic hero, cause and effect and so on. Real drama. With modern drama the stakes often don't seem to be as high. Blowing up a car is not great drama, unless what led the person to blow up that car is seen on screen.' She co-wrote a screenplay called The Anarchist's Daughter when she was 16 which was workshopped at the Sundance Film Festival, so she's allowed an opinion here.

Stiles's next film is Business Of Strangers starring Stockard Channing. 'I play her employee stuck in a hotel on a business trip. I tell her that a guy we met in the bar raped a friend of mine in college and we decide to get revenge on him, but it escalates out of control. It's really about control and power.