After seeing “The Prince and Me,” I had an opportunity to join a conference call for college journalists with Julia Stiles herself, a fellow undergrad in her senior year at Columbia University. I was posed with a dilemma: how does one ask questions of an actress while harboring a disgust and apathy for said actress’ new film? The answer, of course, is to ask about something else entirely.

College Reporter: Do you think your college life and experience is different for you than it would be for most girls your age because of who you are and your celebrity?

Julia Stiles: Well, I think it’s different not because of my celebrity but because I’ve already been working outside of school. I have a career that I’m really devoted to, so I’m lucky that I don’t have to be searching for what I want to do after school. It’s more for my own enjoyment. I don’t have to worry about going to or getting into graduate school, and I don’t have to worry about grades except for my own pride, really. I can’t really say that for everyone, obviously, but I think that I’m lucky in that sense.

CR: When you were making the film, how much were you thinking about “Hamlet” and how much were you thinking about “Coming to America”? I saw a teeny element of those two works of art in the film.

JS: Somebody mentioned to me the “Coming to America” thing and I agreed with them and I was made fun of afterwards. They thought it was a silly reference, but it’s not. I think it is. The plot is similar to “Coming to America” … “Hamlet” is an intense tragedy, which has an entirely different tone from “The Prince and Me,” but the parallels with a young guy who also happens to be the prince of Denmark who’s frustrated with his having to grow up into adulthood, I think that there are definite parallels. We weren’t trying to think in terms of replicating a story; we were trying to think of, um, something that stands on its own. But there are parallels. There’s an old saying that says there are five stories that get told over and over again, and I definitely think that’s true. If you want to think about Shakespeare, I think you want to think of one of the love stories, like “Romeo and Juliet,” where you have people from two different walks of life trying to make their worlds come together.

CR: Where are you in London?

JS: I’m doing “Oleanna” by David Mamet, a play at the West End with Aaron Eckhart. I just got back from rehearsals today.

CR: OK. If you can relate to your character so easily, how do you find ways to continue to stretch yourself as an actress?

JS: That is a very good question. I think when I first read the script, there has to be something on a visceral level that I connect to. But I discovered a lot about myself when we were making the movie, and so I related to the character, but it was a stretch for me to come to terms with certain aspects that were similar between me and my character. It’s very easy for me, Julia, to be guarded and to not address things Paige was not addressing, and I sort of had to confront that myself. So it was kind of a personal stretch, whereas playing a character that would be much different from me, I still have to find similarities or a way to connect to it.

Hatchet: Can you talk to me at all about “The Bourne Supremacy,” the sequel to “The Bourne Identity”?

JS: Sure. I just finished my part in that. I spent two months in Berlin and then went off to India to shoot another part of the movie. Joan Allen is in “The Bourne Supremacy,” and she is heading an operation to find Jason Bourne. My character has kind of started a new life again and gotten out of the world of the CIA. (Allen) knows that I am the last person to have seen Jason Bourne alive, and she thinks that I have a lot more information, so she comes and tracks me down and basically pulls me off the street and forces me to help her with her mission. Meanwhile, Jason Bourne also knows I was the last link to the CIA, so he’s trying to get me to tell him about his past, and I’m sort of stuck between the two worlds. That’s my part of the story.

H: So your role in this one is a lot more expansive than in the original film?

JS: (chuckles) I mean, it couldn’t have gotten smaller than in the first one … (pause, laughs) But yeah. What I think is interesting is, it’s an elaboration on the first one. It’s not like the first one was a wash for me; it kind of builds on that. They couldn’t have done anything but build, but it builds in an interesting way because it uses the circumstances I was dealing with in the first film.