Julia Stiles Danced for Heath Ledger on Dancing With the Stars

“Dedication Night” on Dancing With the Stars was unsurprisingly emotional, but the apex arrived at the end of the night. Julia Stiles chose to pay tribute to the late Heath Ledger, her 10 Things I Hate About You co-star. Stiles and partner Ezra Sosa danced to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” which Ledger sings to Stiles in the film. Their contemporary routine used the same dance moves that Ledger does on the football stands in the film, and Stiles wore a blue dress that was reminiscent of the dress she wears in the movie’s famous prom scene. The dance was capped off with audio from the film, in which Stiles recites the titular “10 Things I Hate About You” poem that her character, Kat, writes about Ledger’s Patrick: “But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you at all.” Stiles was then joined onstage by the cast of the film including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, Andrew Keegan, Gabrielle Union, and Susan May Pratt.

“I said, if we had to have someone with us onstage representing Heath’s legacy or the film, I said it had to be the whole cast,” Stiles told Variety of the performance. “I begged them, each and every one of them, and they all rallied. They really did.” She said that the experience of reembodying the film was “trippy.” “At 17 years old, I never would have thought that I’d be here at 45, celebrating my body, dancing on the show that I absolutely love and that fans are still interested in this movie and still moved and touched by this movie,” she added. Even rehearsals were emotional for her. “One of the things that we really hope to do as performers is to make people feel something and have people care about the work that you do,” she said. “His memory lives on because it was such an incredible performance.”