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Katherine Marie Heigl was born in
Washington, DC, on November 24, 1978, to Nancy and Paul Heigl. A short
time afterward, the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where
Katherine was to spend the majority of her childhood; the youngest member
of her family, Katherine--or "Katie" as she is nicknamed--has two elder
siblings, John and Meg. Tragically, her older brother Jason died in 1986
of brain injuries suffered in a car accident, after being thrown from the
back of a pickup truck. When doctors determined he was brain-dead, the
family made the difficult decision to donate his organs. Not only did this
painful chapter give Katherine a greater perspective and appreciation for
life, but it motivated her to use her celebrity to promote the importance
of organ donation.
Katherine was first thrust into the limelight as a child model. An aunt,
visiting the family in New Canaan, took a number of photographs of
Katherine, then aged nine, in a series of poses to advertise a hair care
product she had invented. Upon returning to New York, with permission from
Katherine's parents, she sent the photos to a number of modeling agencies.
Within a few weeks Katherine had been signed to Wilhelmina, a renowned
international modeling agency. Almost immediately she made her debut in a
magazine advertisement and soon followed this with an inaugural television
appearance in a national commercial for Cheerios breakfast cereal.
Following a number of commercials and modeling assignments for Sears and
Lord & Taylor, she made her big-screen debut in That Night (1992), which
starred Juliette Lewis and C. Thomas Howell. It was then that she realized
that acting rather than modeling was her passion. In 1993 Katherine
appeared in Steven Soderbergh's critically acclaimed Depression-era drama
King of the Hill (1993), before landing her first leading role as a
rebellious teenager alongside Gérard Depardieu in My Father the Hero
(1994). During this time Katherine continued to attend New Canaan High
School, balancing her academic studies with work on films and modeling,
which she undertook during holidays, vacations and weekends.
In 1995, she played Sarah Ryback, the niece of Steven Seagal's character,
in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), which was her "debut" in the
action film genre. Acting was now becoming a stronger focus for Katherine,
although she still modeled extensively, appearing regularly in magazines
such as "Seventeen." Television appearances on "The Tonight Show with Jay
Leno" (1992) and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (1993) soon followed,
before she took the lead role in Disney's Wish Upon a Star (1996) in 1996.
It was also during that year that Katherine's parents divorced and,
following her graduation from high school in 1997, she moved with her
mother into a four-bedroom house in Los Angeles' Malibu Canyon area. This
enabled her to focus upon acting with the guidance and support of her
mother, who now managed her career.
In 1997, Katherine portrayed Taffy Entwhistle, Rita Hayworth's stand-in,
in Stand-ins (1997), and was also cast as the beauteous Princess Ilene in
the European production Prince Valiant (1997). She then made her
made-for-TV movie debut, co-starring with Peter Fonda in a re-working of
the classic Shakespearean play The Tempest (1998) (TV), updated with an
American Civil War theme. In this film, she played Miranda Prosper, a
young woman torn between her love for both her father and a Union soldier.
Bug Buster (1998) and Bride of Chucky (1998) represented a venture into
the horror genre for Katherine. While both films could be described as
rather tongue-in-cheek despite their gory emphases, Bride of Chucky (1998)
was the better received, both critically and commercially.
In 1999, Katherine decided to branch out into series television when she
accepted the role of the haughty yet vulnerable Isabel Evans on "Roswell"
(1999), a show that blended teen angst with sci-fi drama. Though she had
never planned to embark on a career in television, the role of Isabel, a
teenager with a secret life, was an offer she found impossible to refuse.
In the series, Isabel, her brother Max (Jason Behr) and their friend
Michael (Brendan Fehr) are aliens passing as humans in Roswell, New
Mexico, as they desperately try to hide the truth from government
agencies, the people of Roswell and even their own adopted families. To
publicize her role on the show, Katherine graced the covers of magazines
such as "TV Guide," "Maxim," and "Teen" and was interviewed on "Later with
Greg Kinnear" (1994) and "The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn" (1999).
Along with her mother Nancy, she also appeared in an episode of the Sci-Fi
TV talk show "Crossing Over with John Edward" (1999), during which she
spoke with John Edward, a psychic medium, about her late brother, Jason.
During the three years "Roswell" was in production, Katherine found time
to work on several movies. 100 Girls (2000), an independent film released
in 2001, is the story of a college freshman who meets the girl of his
dreams in an elevator during a blackout, and spends the rest of the movie
trying to find her again. Her cameo role is that of Arlene, the
competitive tomboy. The second film, Valentine (2001), a horror film
starring David Boreanaz and Denise Richards, appeared in U.S. theaters on
February 2, 2001. In this movie, which is based upon the 1996 novel by Tom
Savage, Katherine plays Shelley, a medical student who meets a sudden
demise.
In the spring of 2001, Katherine accepted a role in NBC's Critical
Assembly (2003) (TV), a two-hour original television thriller. Katherine
and Kerr Smith ("Dawson's Creek" (1998)) co-starred as brilliant and
politically concerned college students who build a nuclear device to
illustrate the need for a change in national priorities, but are betrayed
by a fellow student when the bomb ends up in the hands of a terrorist.
Unfortunately, the telefilm, directed by Eric Laneuville, written by Tom
Vaughan, and based on the best-seller "The Seventh Power" by James Mills,
was shelved when its storyline was deemed too close for comfort to the
events of September 11, 2001. It was eventually broadcast in 2003.
Since the cancellation of "Roswell" in the spring of 2002, Katherine has
been busy with various projects, including an appearance on UPN's update
of the classic television series, "The Twilight Zone" (2002). That
episode, entitled "Cradle of Darkness", aired October 2, 2002, and
featured Katherine in the role of a woman who goes back in time to stop
one of the most notorious murders in history. In addition, she completed a
movie, Descendant (2003), a psychological thriller inspired by Edgar Allan
Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." She has also starred as Romy in
ABC/Touchstone's two-hour telepic Romy and Michele: In the Beginning
(2005) (TV), a prequel to the 1997 feature Romy and Michele's High School
Reunion (1997).
During the summer of 2002, Katherine made a major decision in the
direction of her career when she signed on for representation in all areas
with the William Morris Agency, one of the biggest and most prestigious
agencies in the entertainment industry. She is now being represented by
Norman Aladjem at Paradigm Agency and being managed by Nancy Heigl and
Stephanie Simon and Jason Newman at Untitled Entertainment. |
