{"id":941219,"date":"2026-10-21T20:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/941219\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T20:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T20:24:11","slug":"dancing-with-the-stars-julia-stiles-honours-heath-ledger-with-live-tribute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/941219\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing with the Stars: Julia Stiles honours Heath Ledger with live tribute"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If your feed is full of late ’90s nostalgia and crying emojis, blame Dancing with the Stars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During Tuesday’s live dedication show, Julia Stiles paid tribute to her 10 Things I Hate About You co-star Heath Ledger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And she wasn’t the only one from the 1999 teen comedy to show up to honour the late actor.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Stiles and Ezra Sosa perform on DWTS:<\/p>\n

Stiles and her partner Ezra Sosa performed a contemporary routine\u00a0to Can\u2019t Take My Eyes Off You by Frankie Valli \u2014 a “no brainer” said Sosa, and a clear homage to when Ledger’s character, Patrick Verona, serenades Stiles\u2019s Kat Stratford.<\/p>\n

“When we filmed that scene the reaction on my face was totally genuine because I was so charmed by him,” Stiles said of Ledger, in a video with Sosa that played ahead of the performance.<\/p>\n

“I see pictures from that time and I’m like, wow, it was so easy with him.” <\/p>\n

Stiles said she’s sad despite her “many great memories” of Ledger. “I really wish that I could pick up the phone and be like, ‘Hey, dude, people really care about that movie. We did something special,” she said, adding that she wanted to recreate his “lust for life.”<\/p>\n

And just like the end of the film, the end of the dance came with a treat. Sosa left Stiles on the ballroom floor as her iconic monologue from the movie played and a photo of she and Ledger was displayed overhead.<\/p>\n

She then placed a rose underneath him before revealing her 10 Things co-stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Larisa Oleynik, Susan May Pratt and Andrew Keegan, linking arm in arm with her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Stiles and her partner Ezra Sosa performed a contemporary routine to Can\u2019t Take My Eyes Off You by Frankie Valli. (Disney)<\/p>\n

“I think what came up for me a lot in this dance was remembering who I was at 17 years old and who I am now.” Stiles told host Julianne Hough after the routine.<\/p>\n

“Heath just brought out the light in everybody. And he was the leader of the pack at the time. And he just made everybody else shine and feel he was always about play. We were so playful back then.” <\/p>\n

Ledger died of an accidental overdose in 2008. He was 28. That year, he was awarded a posthumous Oscar for playing the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.<\/p>\n

Sosa and Stiles scored nines across the board \u2014 their highest score of the season.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Fans might hate it when a reality TV show makes them cry on a Tuesday night. But mostly, as Kat eventually said of Patrick, they don’t hate it. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. <\/p>\n

Alongside Stiles, it was a night packed with other emotional tributes to the cast\u2019s moms, wives and even other fellow co-stars. Tatyana Ali dedicated her dance to her late Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-star James Avery, bringing along her other co-star and DWTS host Alfonso Ribeiro for the routine. <\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

Tatyana Ali and Alfonso Ribeiro, who co-starred in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, paid tribute to the late James Avery. (Disney)<\/p>\n

Ali and her partner Jan Ravnik performed a Viennese waltz to (You Don\u2019t Know) How Glad I Am by Nancy Wilson with Ali recording her own version for the routine.<\/p>\n

Avery, who died in 2013, played Uncle Phil on the sitcom, someone Ali said was “a father figure to all.” <\/p>\n

“It wouldn\u2019t be the performance it needs to be without Alfonso on the stage with me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-941219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}