Julia Stiles asked Michelle Williams for permission to dedicate ‘DWTS’ dance to Heath Ledger

Julia Stiles made several phone calls to arrange the 10 things I hate about you meeting in honor of Heath Ledger, and the first was to Michelle Williams.

Before the “Dedication Night” the Dancing with the starsThe actress contacted Williams, the mother of Ledger’s daughter Matilda, to ask “if everything was OK,” Stiles said. Additional. “And she said ‘yes’.”

But as for the rest of the Ledger family in Australia, she admitted: “I don’t really want to speak for them. »

Williams and Ledger met while directing Brokeback Mountain in 2004 and the following year, Matilda was born. The couple eventually split in the fall of 2007, and a few months later, the 28-year-old actor died of an accidental drug overdose.

For Stiles, honoring her partner was emotional but “very transformative,” she said. Additional after dancing to Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” the song Ledger’s character serenades him with in the 1999 teen romantic comedy, 10 things I hate about you.

“I was like, I was angry the first day of rehearsal because of all the nostalgia and the memories,” she revealed, “but also because I was running into something.”

Her professional partner, Ezra Sosa, was sensitive to what she was going through. “He was successful and he changed the concept or the way we thought about dance in a way that really opened me up, and I will be forever grateful to him for that,” Stiles continued.

Reuniting the cast of the film 27 years later was a lot easier for Stiles.

“It was a group conversation with the producers when we talked about dedicating it to Heath, we needed to find someone to represent the film and join us on stage,” she said. Weekly Entertainment. “And I was like, well, it has to be the whole cast, it can’t be just one person, because we were a pack.”

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Stiles first called Joseph Gordon-Levitt, followed by Larisa Oleynik, who played his sister in the film. “And then Gabby (Union), Susan (May Pratt), (Andrew) Keegan,” she recalled. Entertainment tonight. “Everyone was like, ‘I’ll do it if everyone does it!’ » So it only took one. And it was so special to have them here.

While rehearsing with Sosa, Stiles spoke to his partner about Ledger and his impact on her at such a young age.

“I learned a lot from Heath. He was so genuine,” she said on DWTS. “I was so charmed by him. I see pictures from that time like, ‘Wow, it was so easy with him.’ I have so many great memories, but I’m also sad because I really wish I could pick up the phone and say, “Hey man. »