“10 Things I Hate About You” director Gil Junger just dropped a surprising bit of info.
Despite Julia Stiles’ character Kat Stratford falling for bad boy Patrick Verona (played by Heath Ledger) in the film, she was actually dating Joseph Gordon-Levitt at the time, who played Cameron James.
Junger told Argentine reporter Fede Carestía on his Spanish-language YouTube channel “Mirá a Quién Encontré (Look Who I Found)” that the two actors dated “for a minute, or 10.”
“They were very, very attracted to each other, which was cute,” Junger said. “She’s professing her love to Heath and she’s in love with a guy waiting in his trailer to shoot the next scene.”
He added, “Watching them, it was beautiful how much they enjoyed each other.”
Junger also spoke about that class scene in which Stiles’ character reads a moving poem to Ledger’s Patrick.
“It was so raw, and it was so honest and so vulnerable.”
Junger had asked Stiles whom she was thinking about during the scene.
“She told me, ‘I was just thinking about’ that person’s name that she was deeply in love with at the time,” Junger admitted. “It wasn’t me, certainly, but it wasn’t Heath, either. That was one of the magical performances that I’ve recorded in my lifetime.”
Despite Stiles and Ledger not being the ones who were dating at the time, he did say their chemistry was “amazing” in the 1999 film, which celebrated its 22nd anniversary in March.
Stiles is now married to Preston Cook, with the couple welcoming their son Strummer Newcomb, 3, the same year they tied the knot in 2017.
Gordon-Levitt, on the other hand, is married to Tasha McCauley, with the pair having two sons together.
