Julia Stiles says she is crying through Dancing With the Stars rehearsals for a Heath Ledger tribute, admitting the old movie clips and voices are flooding back years later.

Speaking Thursday at the InStyle Imagemaker Awards in Los Angeles, the actress told Variety the practice sessions hit harder than she expected ahead of Dedication Night.

Stiles and pro partner Ezra Sosa will dance to Frankie Valli’s 1967 hit “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” when the ABC special airs Oct. 20. The song is the same one Ledger’s character used to serenade her in the teen classic “10 Things I Hate About You.”

“I was crying in rehearsals today,” Stiles said. “It’s so crazy.”

“I know that Dedication Night is emotional, but I thought I was distanced from it enough. Like, oh, it was so many years ago.”

She said the footage and sound pulled her straight back into that chapter of her career.

“Something about seeing clips from that movie and images and hearing my voice and hearing his voice is bringing back so many memories. It’s a lot.”

Stiles has already been part of a stacked Season 35 lineup that put another wave of familiar names on the ballroom floor this fall.

Her decision to join the show did not come overnight. Producers had asked her to compete for the past couple of years before she finally said yes.

The turning point, she said, was her birthday.

“I think it was turning 45. I was like, ‘I’m halfway to 90! Why not? It’s now or never.’ I knew that there were going to be emotional hurdles that I’m going to have to get over on this show, like getting over my own nerves, finding my love of performing again, being able to dance in front of an audience, all these things.”

She framed the leap in blunt terms.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, maybe I should tackle that in front of millions and millions of people.’”

That choice put her in the same high-pressure Season 35 field where other celebrities have already faced the grind, including reports that Giada De Laurentiis injured a toe in rehearsals before premiere week.

Stiles said the dedication itself left her with a clear takeaway about why some performances outlast the moment.

“One of the things that I’m taking away from this dedication is one of the things that we really hope to do as performers is to make people feel something and have people care about the work that you do, and his memory lives on because it was such an incredible performance.”

Her path to the ballroom also tracks a wider pattern this season: some stars sign on after long hesitation, while others walk away. One recent example is the account of how Andy Cohen turned down DWTS and said he has no regrets.

Stiles is taking the opposite bet. She is choosing the live audience, the nerves, and a routine tied to a co-star whose work still lands with viewers decades later.

Dedication Night will test whether that bet holds under the lights. For a show that thrives on spectacle, her rehearsal tears are a reminder that craft and memory still cut deeper than choreography alone.