Last week at the Atlantic’s viewing party for President Obama’s speech, actress Julia Stiles told the room, which included Schools chancellor Joel Klein, a touching story that highlighted the deficiencies of the New York public-school system. After she transferred to a private middle school, she said, her science teacher instructed the class to take out their beakers. But Julia didn’t know what a beaker was. “Everyone laughed at me,” she said. Because “I’d never had a science class!”
But this morning, after an account of the story was published in New York, we received an e-mail challenging its veracity!
“I went to middle school with Julia Stiles at Friends Seminary, and I was in her science class, and I can tell you for a fact that the incident with the beaker that she claims never happened,” the e-mail read. “It was 7th Grade, Earth Science with Ms. Allen.” Julia, the classmate noted, had transferred to Friends starting in seventh grade, and they’d been in science together through eighth grade.
At first we were hurt, shocked, to find out that Julia had purposely deceived us. Had she learned nothing from the hurt her character Kat Stratford felt in Ten Things I Hate About You when she found out that Heath Ledger’s character was only dating her to win a bet? Or was it merely that her memory was faulty? We’re going to assume the latter, just to save our own dignity. Because we hate it when celebrities lie. It almost makes us cry. But most of all, we hate the way we don’t hate Julia. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.
The Stiles Ultimatum [NYM]
Related: 10 Things I Hate About You [You Tube]
