Heath Ledger never got to see how much 10 Things I Hate About You would come to mean to people. On Tuesday night, Julia Stiles made sure the audience felt it for him.
During Dancing with the Stars’ Dedication Night on October 20, Stiles, 45, and pro partner Ezra Sosa performed a contemporary routine to Frankie Valli’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, the song Ledger famously sang on the bleacher steps in the 1999 teen classic.
Stiles walked toward a photo of herself and Ledger from the film, laid a rose on the stairs, then stepped backward into the arms of her former castmates. Gabrielle Union, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Andrew Keegan, Susan May Pratt and Larisa Oleynik were all there to meet her.
Ledger died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in 2008. He was 28.
The choreography included several callbacks to Ledger’s own playful performance of the song in the movie. Eagle-eyed fans also noticed that Stiles’ blue dress looked a lot like an outfit her character, Kat Stratford, wore on screen.
In rehearsal footage, Stiles said she had learned a great deal from Ledger and described him as deeply genuine. "I see pictures from that time, and I’m like, wow,” she said. “It was so easy with him. I have so many great memories, but I’m also really sad, because I wish I could pick up the phone and be like, ‘Hey dude, people really care about that movie. We did something special.’ And I can’t do that.”
Her goal for the dance was simple. “I want to recreate the lust for life that he had in that scene,” she said.
Speaking with co-host Julianne Hough after the performance, Stiles said the week had her thinking about the 17-year-old she was then and the woman she is today. “I remember that Heath just brought out the light in everybody,” she said. “He was the leader of the pack at the time. He made everybody else shine.”
Hours before the show, Stiles and Sosa posted a joint message on Instagram explaining how carefully they had approached the routine. They said they had built it with guidance from the people closest to Ledger. It was meant to honor a film that touched many lives and a man whose influence still reaches new generations of fans.
Stiles had already told PEOPLE that the emotional weight of rehearsals caught her off guard. She had assumed that so many years had passed that she would feel some distance. But revisiting clips, photos and the sound of their voices from the film stirred up far more than she expected. Honoring him felt essential, she said, becaus e his performance in the movie keeps him alive for audiences. “I really feel how important it is to honor him,” she said. “He lives on because his performance in that film was so incredible.”