10 Issues I Hate About You and The Secret World of Alex Mack made Larisa Oleynik a real icon of the Nineteen Nineties.
At age 12, Oleynik gained the main position on Nickelodeon sitcom Alex Mack after competing in opposition to greater than 400 different aspiring younger actresses in an open casting name. The sequence ran for 78 episodes between 1994 and 1998, establishing Oleynik a teen idol within the course of. She parlayed her Nickelodeon fame into main roles in Hollywood blockbusters like The Child-Sitters Membership and 10 Issues I Hate About You by the late Nineteen Nineties.
Oleynik has principally maintained privateness round her romantic life, although she did date 10 Issues costar Joseph Gordon-Levitt within the late Nineteen Nineties. She informed Morbidly Beautiful in 2019 that she realized at an early age that it was essential to maintain her private life away from the general public.
“I used to be 12 after I began doing Alex Mack. It was difficult for me, and after I began getting acknowledged and stuff it was very complicated,” she remembered. “I used to be shuttling forwards and backwards to my actual life dwelling in northern California. We’d journey to southern California to movie after which return to northern California to be in class.”
The beloved 10 Issues I Hate About You made its debut on March 31, 1999, and greater than twenty years later, followers are nonetheless speaking in regards to the romantic comedy. Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger performed star-crossed lovers Kat Stratford and Patrick Verona, respectively. The pair reluctantly fell in love with one another amid a backdrop […]
She continued, “I used to be making an attempt to take care of some sense of normalcy, no matter a standard childhood even means. However it will get complicated typically after I’d be hanging out with my associates and somebody would acknowledge me. I used to be very self acutely aware about it.”
“As I’ve grown up, I believe that is one thing I’m nonetheless making an attempt to determine, making an attempt to tackle a public persona but in addition be capable to depart it as I have to,” Oleynik famous.
Oleynik took a break from her appearing profession on the top of her Nineteen Nineties fame to enroll in New York’s Sarah Lawrence Faculty. She referred to her self-imposed appearing hiatus as “one of the best choice” she’d ever made in a 2006 interview.
“I knew that I wished to go to high school and I wished to go for 4 years, and in New York,” she stated. “My favourite [classes] have been the writing workshops. I took poetry courses, and programs in playwright and screenwriting. They have been very comforting and productive. Everybody was respectful of one another. Nobody claimed to know every part.”
Larisa Oleynik and Julia Stiles in ’10 Issues I Hate About You’ Courtesy Touchstone Photos/ Courtesy: Everett Assortment
In a 2024 New York Times profile, Oleynik stated she was partially impressed to attend Sarah Lawrence Faculty as a result of it was the identical college her costar Julia Stiles’ character Kat selected in 10 Issues I Hate About You.
Oleynik revisited 10 Issues I Hate About You when she reunited with costar and onscreen sister Stiles on the New York Metropolis premiere of Stiles’ function directorial debut Want You Have been Right here in January 2025. Stiles informed People earlier within the evening that she was trying ahead to catching up with Oleynik.
“I do know that Larisa Oleynik is gonna be right here tonight, which might be fantastic to see her,” she stated. “We form of, you realize, the way in which that it’s exhausting to communicate with individuals however [we talk] over textual content messages.”
Many beloved romance-focused motion pictures have taken inspiration from the Bard himself: William Shakespeare. 10 Issues I Hate About You, the 1999 cult traditional that starred Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger, was initially impressed by The Taming of the Shrew. The film adopted sisters Kat and Bianca Stratford (performed by Stiles and Larisa Oleynik, respectively) as […]
Oleynik informed The New York Instances in 2024 that she actually did really feel a sisterly bond with Stiles whereas they have been filming 10 Issues I Hate About You. She remembered wanting her costar’s consideration and approval on set as a result of Stiles was a “a cool, downtown New Yorker” who appeared “a lot extra mature,” despite the fact that they have been only some months aside in age.
In January 2024, Oleynik revisited one other longtime friendship she shared with Rider Sturdy, which started after they starred within the nationwide touring firm of Les Miserables as kids. Sturdy referred Oleynik to her first-ever appearing agent and sparks flew just a few years later when she visitor starred on his sitcom Boy Meets World.
“[Rider] was my first kiss, like, ever. That’s why there was a lot tongue!” Oleynik shared on Sturdy’s “Pod Meets World” podcast. “All I keep in mind of that total expertise, of the primary episode at the least, it was [filmed] between the primary and second episode of [The Secret World of] Alex Mack. I used to be a really younger, 14 or 15 years outdated, and I used to be a really late bloomer. When issues sped up, they actually sped up. However at that time, I used to be a child.”
Oleynik continues to behave whereas dwelling a considerably quieter life in Venice, California. She had a recurring position on Mad Males as advert govt Ken Cosgrove’s girlfriend Cynthia Baxter and returned to Nickelodeon to voice the witch Icy within the animated revival of Winx Membership.
Oleynik has additionally labored extensively on stage, together with starring within the Off-Broadway manufacturing Who’s Your Baghdaddy, or How I Began the Iraq Warfare from 2017 to 2018. The play satirizes the occasions main as much as the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
The actress headlined the one-woman present I Liked, I Misplaced, I Made Spaghetti on the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York in 2016, the place she regaled audiences with tales of affection, loss and the entire meals alongside the way in which. The stage comedy was tailored from Giulia Melucci’s 2010 memoir of the identical identify.
Julia Stiles is named a former teen movie queen — and maybe her most well-known character is Kat Stratford from 10 Issues I Hate About You. The good, strong-willed highschool feminist at all times spoke her thoughts and tried to keep away from what others thought of her within the course of. Stiles, 43, believes she’d nonetheless be […]
“While you [read the memoir], you’re feeling such as you’re hanging out with a good friend,” she explained. “[This] looks as if the most straightforward factor on the earth however to essentially be capable to create that surroundings artistically, and have that be what you’re making an attempt to provide individuals as an expertise, I simply suppose there’s nothing extra profound than that.”
The actress entered a brand new profession section prior to now few years, as she’s began enjoying mothers on TV sitcoms. Talking to E! News in 2020, Oleynik joked that she was totally embracing being “within the mother zone” stage of her profession.
“Being within the ‘mother zone’ is one of the best,” she declared. “That’s…what I’m going out for proper now, not solely, however that’s simply the place I’m at. And it’s really an enormous aid.”
Larisa Oleynik on the SAG-AFTRA picket line in November 2023. Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Photographs
She returned to Nickelodeon as soon as once more with a starring position in 2023’s Erin & Aaron, a live-action sitcom about teenage stepsiblings struggling to coexist in a blended household. The previous Alex Mack star — who performs the title characters’ mom on Erin & Aaron— stated that her newest Nickelodeon position “actually” felt like a full-circle second.
“I auditioned for the present identical to some other audition,” she informed Sweety High in 2023. “I, like most actors within the final couple years, have simply been doing self-tape after self-tape after self-tape. This one got here up, and I do know the casting director very well, and I initially responded to the fabric and thought it appeared actually enjoyable. It was solely after the truth that I used to be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be on Nickelodeon once more — as a mother!’ It’s been actually enjoyable.”
She went on, “Regardless that the setup is totally different on this present — not solely as a result of it’s 25 years later, but in addition we’re additionally in a studio, and it’s a multi-cam present, whereas Alex Mack was single-calm out in Valencia — I’m actually flooded with lots of these reminiscences in actually optimistic methods. I’m in contact with lots of the forged and I’m on a textual content thread proper now with a few of the crew, so shut with hair and make-up and wardrobe. There’s one thing about it that feels actually beautiful, really. It seems like household.”