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Katherine Heigl Biography

Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Katherine Heigl
 Katherine Marie Heigl, born November 24, 1978) is an American actress and producer. She is possibly best known for her role as Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens on ABC's medical drama Grey's Anatomy from 2005 to 2010, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2007. She has also starred in films such as Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, Zyzzyx Road, Knocked Up, 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth, Killers, Life As We Know It, New Year's Eve, and One for the Money.

Heigl started her career as a child model with Wilhelmina Models before she turned her attention to acting. She made her debut in the coming-of-age film That Night. Heigl co-starred as Isabel Evans in the television series Roswell and movies including My Father the Hero before landing her break-out role in Grey's Anatomy. Heigl has established herself as a cover model appearing on numerous publications including Maxim, Vanity Fair and Cosmopolitan.
Heigl was born in Washington, D.C., at Columbia Hospital for Women. She is the youngest of four children to Nancy (née Engelhardt), a personnel manager, and Paul Heigl, a financial executive and accountant. Her father is of German and Irish descent and her mother is of German ancestry. Heigl was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her siblings are Meg, Jason (deceased), and Holt.[11] Heigl lived in Virginia and then Denver before her family settled in Connecticut, when they moved into a large, old Victorian-style farmhouse in the wealthy town of New Canaan, where she spent most of her childhood.
Katherine Heigl

In 1986, her older brother Jason died of injuries suffered in a car accident, after being thrown from the back of a pickup truck while out for lunch with some of his high school classmates. Following his death, the family decided to donate his organs. Heigl was unnerved by this at the time, and later became a strong proponent of organ donation, working as a spokesperson for Donate Life America. After Jason Heigl's death, their parents converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (prior to that her mother was Lutheran and her father Catholic)

Career
Early work, 1986–1998
When Heigl was nine, an aunt visiting the family decided to take a number of photographs of her. After returning to her home in New York, her aunt sent the photos to a number of modeling agencies, with the permission of Heigl's parents. Within a few weeks, Heigl was signed with Wilhelmina Models as a child model. Soon after signing with the agency, a client slated Heigl for use in a magazine advertisement where she made her debut. At the time, she was earning $75 an hour posing for Sears and Lord & Taylor catalogs. Heigl appeared in her first national television spot for Cheerios cereal.

She made her acting debut in the 1992 movie That Night. Heigl appeared as Christina Sebastian in Steven Soderbergh's Depression-era drama King of the Hill before being cast in her first leading role in the 1994 comedy My Father the Hero. During this time, Heigl continued to attend New Canaan High School, balancing her film and modeling work with her academic studies. Heigl dropped out of New Canaan High School after her sophomore year to pursue her career in Hollywood
.In 1995, she starred in the Steven Seagal action thriller Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. Heigl portrayed a 16-year-old travelling on a train across a mountain pass to visit the grave of her deceased father with uncle Casey Ryback (Seagal), an ex-SEAL counter-terrorist expert. The main plotline has the train hijacked by mercenaries in Colorado, keeping her as a hostage. Much of her work in the film was opposite Morris Chestnut, Sandra Taylor and Everett McGill.

Despite an increased focus on acting, she still modeled extensively, appearing regularly in magazines such as Seventeen. She landed the lead role in Disney's made-for-television film Wish Upon a Star in 1996, portraying two body-swapping characters along with Danielle Harris. Also in 1996, Heigl's parents divorced and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. After her high school graduation in 1997, she moved into a four-bedroom house in Malibu Canyon, Los Angeles, with her mother, who also became her manager.

In 1998, she co-starred with Peter Fonda in a re-working of the classic Shakespearean play The Tempest, set during the American Civil War. Later that year, she starred in the horror film Bride of Chucky.
Rise to fame, 1999–2004

In 1999, Heigl turned her attention to television when she accepted the role of Isabel Evans on the science fiction TV drama Roswell, a role that was expanded in the show's second and third seasons. Heigl had auditioned for all three of the show's female leads (the other two roles eventually went to Shiri Appleby and Majandra Delfino) before she was finally cast as Isabel, an alien human hybrid.

Heigl was frequently featured in photo essays in magazines such as Life, TV Guide, and Teen as well as FHM. She appeared in the FHM and Maxim calendars, FHM's annual "100 Sexiest Women in the World", and was featured in the Girls of Maxim Gallery.[20] In May 2006, Maxim awarded her #12 on their annual Hot 100List as well as voted the 19th "Sexiest Woman in the World" by readers of FHM magazine. While Roswell was in production, Heigl worked on several films, including 100 Girls, an independent 2001 film, and Valentine, a horror film starring David Boreanaz and Denise Richards.

Heigl accepted a role in Ground Zero, a television thriller scheduled to be telecast that fall which was based on the bestselling James Mills novel The Seventh Power, in the spring of 2001. She co-starred as a brilliant and politically-concerned college student who helps to build a nuclear device to illustrate the need for a change in national priorities. The device ends up in the hands of a terrorist following betrayal by a fellow student. However, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the film was shelved when its plot was considered inappropriate. It reemerged in 2003 under the title Critical Assembly. After the attacks, Heigl recorded a public service announcement for the American Red Cross in an effort to help raise money for victims.

In 2003, Heigl appeared in three television movies. She returned to the horror genre with Evil Never Dies, a modern-day variation on the Frankenstein story co-starring Thomas Gibson. Love Comes Softly, for Hallmark Entertainment, found Heigl starring as Marty Claridge, a young, pregnant newlywed traveling west. (She reprised the role of Marty in the sequel Love's Enduring Promise the next year.) Heigl played Isabella Linton in MTV's modern revamp of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. In October 2003, Heigl was cast opposite Johnny Knoxville in The Ringer, a Farrelly brothers comedy that was released in December 2005. Heigl starred as Romy in the 2005 television movie Romy and Michele: In the Beginning, a prequel to the 1997 film Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.

SOURCE : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Heigl