Julia was spooked by creepy going-on during The Omen remake
By Rick Fulton
ACTRESS Julia Stiles admits she was terrified filming the remake of the 1976 horror movie The Omen.
The film about Damien, the spawn of the devil, is out next month on - you guessed it - 6.6.06. And Julia admits it was dogged by weird goings-on.
The 25-year-old stars as Katherine Thorn, originally played by Lee Remick, who is given the devil incarnate in place of her dead baby. And from the word go, the actress was spooked.
Julia said: "On the first day of shooting for me, we were doing a scene where Liev (Schreiber, who plays her husband Robert) hands me the baby in the hospital and we couldn't shoot the scene because these church bells kept going off for, like, 20 minutes.
"They kept going, and it was six minutes after six that they had started... so I don't know. Explain that one to me."
But worse was to come.
She said: "I had horrible nightmares the whole time we were shooting - images from the original film and religious imagery. I think, if anything, that was a good thing because that indicated to me the movie is powerful."
The fear of such experiences had made Julia cautious about the film.
She said: "I was a little wary of accepting the role. Even though it was really intriguing to me, and I enjoyed it, and thought it would be fun to play this part, I was worried about tempting fate or something."
Of course, the moment Julia really worried about was the famous scene when her character falls from the banister.
She said: "I was terrified that was going to be one of the freak accidents, and luckily that didn't happen."
The New York actress who has starred in The Bourne Identity and Save the Last Dance was also freaked out by the stories told by her co-star Mia Farrow, who also starred in another horror classic, Rosemary's Baby, and plays the creepy Mrs Baylock in The Omen.
Julia said: "She said everybody who, at the end scene, was in the room chanting and worshipping Satan had something bad happen to them afterwards.
"She would tell us about that but I'd be like, 'I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it'."
The young blonde, who has been talking earnestly in a room at The Mark Hotel, New York, bursts into nervous laughter. But she's happy to report the nightmares ended when shooting did.
Maybe Julia was partly drawn to the role because of her morbid fascination for cemeteries.
Looking embarrassed, she admitted: "I think they are really beautiful and peaceful. I'm fascinated at how people decorate gravestones."
So while her fellow actors go shopping, Julia regularly goes to cemeteries for a nosy.
"How do you explain that to people?" she giggled. "But it's true.
"My apartment in Prague, where we were shooting this, was right near the Jewish cemetery which has nine layers of gravestones which I think anybody else would find disturbing."
I find it more disturbing that, as a woman, she doesn't like shopping. "Nooo. Isn't that weird?" she squealed.
"I hate trying things on. At the end of the day, maybe the fluorescent light bugs me... I don't know."
With an aversion to light, and a love of cemeteries, it's no wonder Julia - who has English, Irish and Italian blood in her - is a bit of a Goth. And naturally, she's a horror film fan.
She said: "I saw the original of The Omen as a child, oddly enough. "I love classic horror films like Psycho and The Exorcist.
"But I never thought that I wanted to act in one because I always thought that actors don't really get to do much in them except react and pretend to be afraid.
"What I really liked about this one, and what made me change my mind, is that it's very psychologically driven.
"So even aside from anyone's belief in the book of Revelations and the devil, each character has this intense fear of something that's an unknown force, or something that you can't identify and you can't control, and I think that's kind of a fundamental human experience."
While she never met the original actress Lee Remick she bonded with acting legend Mia.
Julia laughed: "We did a play together before we started shooting this film.
"We went from playing mother and daughter and then two weeks later we were shooting a scene in Prague where she was trying to murder me, so it was very confusing."
She added: "It was really comforting to have her on set because she's very maternal and very funny. You get to know someone very well when you're doing a play."
But what of the young actor, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, who plays devil-child Damien Thorn?
She laughed: "I think he's such an adorable kid. He and Liev would be playing all the time onset and I would want to participate but I definitely kept him at bay because I wanted there to be that distance so that when I picked him up in a scene he would get stiff or whatever.
"It was so sad. And then I would go say to him that I was actually a nice person and that I was just acting."
Julia knows all about being a child actor. At the age of 11, she made her debut with the experimental off-Broadway La MaMa Theatre.
She missed out to Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire in 1994 but two years later made her film debut in I Love You, I Love You Not.
Roles alongside Harrison Ford in The Devil's Own, and Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity and Supremacy, as well as The Prince and Me and Mona Lisa Smile, were to follow.
Last year Julia graduated with a degree in English from Columbia University in New York City, after keeping up her studies while making a name for herself in Hollywood.
X-Men star Anna Paquin was a college class mate and Julia, despite being a famous Hollywood face, lived on campus for two years, deferring semesters while she was there to make films such as Oleanna.
She said: "It became harder because I wasn't really that close to my classmates - which also helped me focus more in school."
What about sharing a dorm room?
Julia said: "I thought it was great because I wanted to have that sort of typical experience - and it was the first time I was living away from my parents, except for making a movie.
"But you're very protected when you're making a movie so Ienjoyed it a lot."
One thing she didn't do at college, however, was the stereotypical amount of partying.
Julia, who will next star in the third Bourne film The Bourne Ultimatum, said: "I felt a little self-conscious.
"I did my fair share, I think, and I certainly had fun but I was careful not to get out of control too much.
"Because people are gossiping in college anyway."
So Julia's not going to adopt the party lifestyle of other grown-up child stars, such as Lindsay Lohan, then?
She said: "No, I don't think so.
"I don't think my mother would approve."
The Omen is out on June 6.
'I had horrible dreams the whole time - images from the original film and religious imagery. That showed the movie is powerful'
Source: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_ob ... _page.html
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