Katherine Heigl

Fans of Grey’s Anatomy (and how many of us don’t fall into this category?) will remember the scene well: Izzie Stevens, then surgical intern at Seattle Grace Hospital, sick of her colleagues’ whispers about her former career as an underwear model, storms into the changing room where they are sniggering about one of her magazine spreads, rips off her scrubs and shouts at them to have a good look at the body that’s paid her med school fees. Cue instant respect – and not for revealing a little flesh, but for refusing to buckle under the assumption that she’s just another ‘dumb blonde’.

It was this breakout role playing the feisty, strong-willed Izzie that catapulted Katherine Heigl into the Hollywood A-list – and Heigl’s undergone a similar trans-formation, gaining a reputation in the business as a girl with an opinion ‘rather than a blank stare’, as one writer from The Washington Post put it.

It all started in 2007, when former Grey’s Anatomy colleague Isaiah Washington referred to fellow Grey’s star, T.R. Knight, by a homophobic slur. She was infuriated, first by the incident and then by Washington’s refusal to apologise – and she let Hollywood know, telling Access Hollywood that Washington ‘needs to just not speak in public’ after he repeated the slur at a Golden Globes press conference. She later called it ‘thoughtless and bone-headed’ in an Entertainment Weekly article, and while the producers didn’t  say whether it was a direct result of Katherine speaking out against him, Washington was fired from the show shortly afterwards.

More recently, it was her description of her 2007 hit Knocked Up as ‘sexist, painting the women as shrews’ that made people sit up and listen. ‘Uggg,’ she said in The Washington Post about the idea that women always had to be the nag in the relationship. ‘I hate the nag. Most of my friends are funny, witty, intelligent and beautiful women, so it’s not that unusual, a pretty girl being funny, is it? But for some reason, in this town, they really like to compartmentalise, so you’re either the character actor who is funny or you’re the pretty girl in the movie.’

And while critics called her comments ‘ungrateful’, many others said it was brave, strong and mature, especially in what Marie Claire refers to as a ‘(male-dominated) business where diplomacy counts for more than honesty’ and where ‘an actress saying what she actually thinks upsets the status quo’.

But criticism of her outspoken ways doesn’t seem to bother Katherine much. Her response? ‘You know, screw it, I’m not going to pussyfoot around issues any more. I kind of say what I think. And if I feel passionately about something I will be honest about it.

‘Lately I’ve been getting a lot of crap from people thinking that I shouldn’t have an opinion,’ she said in an inter-view with Marie Claire. ‘(But as) my brother says, a third of people love you, a third of them hate you and a third are indifferent, and there’s nothing you can do to change those numbers.’

Looking at her box-office pull, it seems like Katherine has a much larger share of the love than just a third. She’s currently the fifth-highest paid actress in Hollywood, has just returned to our screens for a sixth season of Grey’s, was named AskMen.com’s Most Desirable Woman of 2008 and has three romcom hits to her name (Knocked Up, The Ugly Truth and 27 Dresses). Co-star Gerard Butler describes her as ‘smart and ballsy and razor-sharp sexy... and a bit crazy’.

She also became mom to adopted Korean-born daughter, Naleigh, last September – something she’d always planned on doing, having grown up with an adopted sister.

‘[Josh and I] started talking about adoption before we were engaged,’ she told Ellen DeGeneres. ‘It’s been a big part of my life and my family.’  

Katherine Marie Heigl was born in Washington DC in 1978, the youngest of Nancy and Paul Heigl’s four kids. But eight years later the stability of her comfortable family life was torn from under her feet when her brother, Jason, was killed in a car accident. Shortly after this her family converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormonism, and while Katherine no longer identifies herself as strictly following the religion, she has said that it went a long way to saving her family after her brother’s death, and still offers her immense comfort.

The conversion to Mormonism wasn’t the only big change for the family following Jason’s death – it
was also the catalyst for her getting into the movie business.

 ‘I leapt,’ she told Marie Claire. ‘My brother had been killed in a car accident and my mother was in a really bad place. It was a great thing for her to switch focus and not be home all day under the weight of her sorrow. And it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I loved it from the moment I put my foot on the first mark of the first set.