The 10 Things I Hate About You director has claimed Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Julia Stiles dated. Photo / Supplied
The 10 Things I Hate About You director has claimed Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Julia Stiles dated. Photo / Supplied
The director of 10 Things I Hate About You has dropped a major revelation about the unlikely cast members who fell in love and dated during filming.
It's taken more than two decades for such information to emerge, after the 1999 film's US director Gil Junger went completely rogue in an interview with Spanish outlet, Mira A Quien Encontre.
Despite ongoing rumours at the time that the teen comedy's onscreen couple, Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, had developed a relationship off-screen, it turns out Stiles was actually "deeply in love with" another main actor, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You. Photo / Supplied
Junger, 66, went as far as saying Stiles thought of Gordon-Levitt when performing her famous poem scene, which he said she did in one take.
"That was maybe one of the most moving performances I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty," Junger said in the interview.
"It just killed me. It was so raw, and it was so honest, and it was so vulnerable. I even asked her — I said, 'Where did that come from?' And she told me, 'I was just thinking about'... That person's name that she was deeply in love with at the time."
While it seemed at this point Junger was going to refrain from divulging details on the high-profile union, it took a matter of seconds for him to spill the tea. All of it.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Julia Stiles. Photos / News Limited, News Corp Australia
"It wasn't me, certainly, but it wasn't Heath either," he added. "She, for a minute or 10, went out with Joseph Gordon-Levitt," he continued.
"She's professing her love to [on-screen boyfriend Ledger] and she's in love with a guy waiting in his trailer to shoot the next scene.
"Watching them, it was beautiful how much they enjoyed each other."
Watching this scene will never be the same. Photo / Supplied
Stiles previously told news.com.au in 2017 there were cast hook-ups behind the scenes, though the Jason Bourne star stopped short of dropping names.
"Of course there was. You get a bunch of young people together, you're having a lot of fun ... we were at a time in our lives when we were still open and uncensored, and un-self-conscious. It was fun," Stiles said.
Junger didn't disclose how long the pair dated for but things are well and truly over between them.
Gordon-Levitt, 40, married scientist Tasha McCauley in 2014, while Stiles, also 40, married actor Preston Cook in 2017.
