Happily married Heigl is a bridesmaid no more
Better known as Izzie from Grey's Anatomy, or even "that Knocked Up girl", the lovely Katherine Heigl finally has a starring role to call her own in 27 Dresses. Screenjabber's Stuart O'Connor spent 27 minutes in her presence at the film's recent press conference. Lucky sod.
She may be blonde, but Katherine Heigl is no bimbo. Tall and stunningly gorgeous, the star of 27 Dresses doesn't have a Paris Hilton bone in her body. For a start, she can actually string a sentence together — as she proved when assorted London hacks descended on the Dorchester Hotel to throw a few questions her way. And as you would expect, most of the questions were about her new film, 27 Dresses — a light, fluffy and slightly bland rom-com in which Heigl plays Jane, a perennial bridesmaid who's in love with a man who doesn't realise it.
"I'm a huge romantic comedy fan," she says. "I've been in this business for 17 years, and have hoped and dreamed and wished to be in a romantic comedy myself. This was the first one that I read that I actually laughed out loud to. I just really loved the characters — I though they were sort of very honestly flawed and yet still very endearing and welcoming. There was something about them that I felt people could identify with; they weren't so shiny and perfect all the time."
Although Heigl has been in the business for a while now, this is her first leading role — and she found the task a little overwhelming at times. "It was exhausting. I'm used to more of an ensemble cast, and I had to learn to manage my downtime as best I could to keep my energy up because at the end of a really long day, to keep the performance fresh and honest and real, it gets very difficult. I didn't really have a day off to recuperate, I had to keep it going — on coffee!"
Of course, there were the usual dumb gossip-rag questions that she's probably heard at least 27 times before (do you have much bridesmaiding experience? Do you have a closet full of dresses? Is your own life as ordered as Jane's? Do you see yourself as a role model? Who's the better kisser, James or Seth? Where do you like to shop in London?) — but Heigl handled them with grace. And ever the professional, she steered things back to talking about her new film. Although there was one aspect of her life that just couldn't be avoided. In a PR flack's dream, Heigl got married last December, to musician Josh Kelley. But she wasn't too thrilled about the studio using her personal life as a promotional tie-in.
"I had been planning my wedding for nine months and then they decided to release the film a week or two after I got married," she says. "I was kind of annoyed with them; I'd had enough of weddings and the whole thing." But she does admit to having settled easily into wedded bliss. "It's been really wonderful so far. There's a sort of steadiness to it that wasn't there before, which sounds really boring, but in our particular lives and professions, that's a great thing. I feel like I can just be me — I don't have to worry about impressing him, I don't have to worry about pleasing him all the time. It's just a very comfortable and wonderful relationship."
The two film's Heigl's done in the past year were very different in tone, so she approached them from two very different directions. "I thought Knocked Up was a little more the kind of humour born from experiences versus born from situations," she says. "And the comedy came from a more uptight, serious place playing against Seth [Rogen's] character, who was so sort of that outrageous guy that any woman would want to throttle. Where Jane I thought was a little more schticky, it was a little more physical comedy, a little goofier. She was a little uptight herself, but it came from a different place. What I'd like to do next is really find a perfect comedy — a combination between that lovely fantasy escapism world that women love and a little edgier style that Knocked Up was, so that women don't have to drag their boyfriends to the movie."
As you would expect, with the heightened profile Heigl has enjoyed in the past few years — a top-rating TV series and two hit films — her life has been altered somewhat. "Everything has changed," she says. "The level of success has changed, the level of attention has changed, certainly the level of respect, the level of opportunities, peoples' reactions and responses. There's nothing remotely the same except for my family and friends. Oh, and my whole wardrobe's changed!"
• 27 Dresses is now showing across the UK ... and our review is HERE