Julia Stiles—she’s just like us!
The 10 Things I Hate About You star detailed the “crazy” run-in she once had with Taylor Swift in the Wednesday, May 21 episode of the podcast How to Fail, where she begrudgingly opened up about meeting the superstar at a “game night party” they were both invited to.
Stiles, 44, joked, “God, I hate myself right now,” as she dove into the tale. “The biggest name-dropping I could do—but it happened and it’s awesome.”
Swift, she said, just “has that presence” where you “could just feel” her entering the room. She wasn’t planning on bothering the Eras Tour artist that night, but as she was getting ready to leave, someone intervened, letting her know that Swift was interested in saying hi to her.
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“…he was like, ‘She really likes your work,’” the actress recalled, adding that she “blacked out” as they shook hands. “I don’t remember, actually, what happened after that—but she said something very nice to me.”
Stiles further “dissociated for a second” while the two chatted, but eventually “worked up the courage” to praise the musician. “You’re amazing; this is crazy,” she told her, recalling the way she “looked like she genuinely appreciated it.”
While “there used to be a part of [her]” that insisted she “play it cool” when crossing paths with another actor or artist that she admired, more recently she’s “discovered that everybody that’s a performer wants to know people are listening to their music or watching their movies or care at all.”
Now, she’s “totally, unselfconsciously ready to say” how fantastic she thinks somebody is.
“Even somebody like Taylor Swift, who is the biggest star on the planet, seems humble enough or just positive enough to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m glad that bazillions of people like to listen to my music,’” she pointed out. “They don’t take it for granted.”
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