Julia Stiles Honors Heath Ledger on 'DWTS' With a '10 Things' Reunion

She and Ezra Sosa danced to “Can't Take My Eyes Off You,” the song Ledger's character sings to hers in the 1999 film.

Julia Stiles finished her “Dancing With the Stars” routine on Tuesday alone on the floor. She set a rose under a still from “10 Things I Hate About You” while her own speech from the movie played where the music should have been.

Then she walked over to her old castmates. The dance was dedicated to Heath Ledger, her co-star in the 1999 teen comedy, Deadline reported. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Larisa Oleynik, Susan May Pratt and Andrew Keegan linked arms with her to close it out.

Ledger and Stiles met making “10 Things,” a high school spin on Shakespeare's “The Taming of the Shrew,” and it was her first major feature. He was 28 when he died of an accidental overdose in January 2008, ABC News noted, and he won a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker in Christopher Nolan's “The Dark Knight.”

So the song wasn't a random pick. She and her partner, Ezra Sosa, did a contemporary routine to Frankie Valli's “Can't Take My Eyes Off You.” In the movie, Ledger's Patrick Verona sings it to Stiles' Kat Stratford up in the stadium bleachers, the school's marching band behind him, until security chases him down.

Stiles told Sosa she'd always admired his “lust for life” and wanted to bring some of it to the dance, according to Deadline.

The ABC show's “Dedication Night” asked its 10 remaining couples to honor the people and places that shaped them. Most of the dances on the lineup went to family: moms, a dad, a wife, a sister. Stiles brought back much of a movie's cast.

Her four 9s were among the night's highest scores. “Watching you, it just makes me want to open my heart,” judge Carrie Ann Inaba told her, Deadline reported.

Source: Deadline, retrieved October 21, 2026. Other sources: abcnews.com.