If the movie based on Sylvia Plath’s book “The Bell Jar” is bad, it won’t be because the star was unprepared. Julia Stiles is doing some serious homework as she prepares to play the tragic heroine of Plath’s one and only novel.

Over the weekend, the actress attended a symposium at Smith College commemorating the writer’s would-be 75th birthday. (Plath, a Smith alum, committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.)

We’re told Stiles attended every talk of the symposium, taking notes and asking questions of the high-powered panel of Plath scholars. During a discussion with the poet’s onetime roommate Marcia Brown Stern, former boyfriend Philip McCurdy, and classmate Elinor Friedman Klein, the actress inquired how the poet “carried herself.”

In response, McCurdy recalled Plath’s “long legs.” Stiles, who is producing the movie version of Plath’s book, also took a tour of Northampton’s Academy of Music Theatre, where, we’re told, she may premiere “The Bell Jar.” The actress said she’ll be back on campus soon to look at a gown once worn by Plath.
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