Julia Stiles Was Stranded and Broke in Cuba

Actress Julia Stiles was almost stuck in Cuba last December while providing humanitarian aid, she writes in the Wall Street Journal.

"With three days left to go in my trip, I was walking around Havana flat broke," she writes. "Cuba is not a place where one can access American banks or use credit cards, so if you run out of cash you cannot get anything. You can't even get off the island."

Stiles was in the midst of figuring out how to get money when she received news of her Golden Globe nomination for her guest role on 'Dexter,' and couldn't even enjoy it.

"[I was] thrilled to have received such a professional honor, yet still unable to barter it for cab fare," she writes.

She tried to figure out how she had gotten into such a cash-strapped situation.

She writes, "I replayed every expense that had gotten me to this point. ... I was under the impression I had been quite frugal, but I was so accustomed to thoughtlessly using credit cards, I had underestimated how much cash to bring even just for the basics."

Stiles' younger sister was also in Cuba with her college, and promised to cover her financially, but there was one minor problem: the cash was locked in her dorm's safe, which could take days to open. In the meantime, Stiles had to figure out how to survive on her skills.

She quips, "I thought about reciting monologues in the Plaza Vieja for spare change."

Long story short, the dorm's safe was eventually opened and the owner of the Havana bed and breakfast where Stiles was staying drove her to the airport to catch a flight to Miami.

If one thing's for sure, she won' forget about this trip for a quite a while.

"With all of its crumbling beauty, Havana taught me the true value of a dollar," she writes. "It also taught me that the people you know, and the ways in which you rely on one another, are more valuable than any paper currency."