Julia Stiles channeled a popular character from her past recently and looked quite shocked by the script all these years later.

Earlier this week, the Mash-Up Americans Book Festival in New York City set up Stiles to revive Katarina “Kat” Stratford from the hit 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You. In the big-screen teen rom-com, Kat reads a “hateful” poem to Patrick Verona, a bad boy portrayed by Heath Ledger.

“I hate the way you’re always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry,” the poem reads in part.

Toward the end of the reading, Stiles appears to get emotional recalling the scene. Her co-star Ledger, died in 2008 at the age of 28. 10 Things I Hate About You is one of Ledger’s most popular films alongside A Knight’s Tale, Casanova, The Dark Knight and Brokeback Mountain, among many others.

Directed by Gil Junger, 10 Things I Hate About You is a modernized version of the William Shakespeare comedy, The Taming of the Shrew set in the 90s. It follows Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a high school student who cannot date Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) until her anti-social older sister, Kat, has a boyfriend. So, Cameron pays a mysterious boy, Patrick, to charm Kat.

Watch Stiles reading the poem below.