Katherine Heigl Biography

Katherine Marie Heigl (born November 24, 1978) is an American actress best known for her roles in the TV series Roswell and Grey's Anatomy and movies including My Father the Hero, Knocked Up and 27 Dresses.

With a beauty harkening back to old Hollywood, Katherine Heigl – a onetime Sears catalog child model who later paid her dues as a decidedly less-than-glamorous slasher film victim – finally earned widespread acclaim for her role as Dr. Izzie Stevens on the award-winning medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” (ABC, 2005- ).

Heigl was born on Nov. 24, 1978, the youngest of five children to Paul and Nancy Heigl. Heigl was promptly signed by the prestigious Wilhelmina agency and began catalog modeling and eventually TV commercial acting. Following the break-up of her parents and her graduation from high school, Heigl and her mother relocated to Malibu in 1997, at which time Nancy Heigl became her manager. When “Roswell” was cancelled in the spring of 2002, Heigl stayed busy with unremarkable TV movies, horror films, and an MTV remake of “Wuthering Heights” (2003). In the 2005 romp “Romy & Michele: The Beginning” – a prequel to the film “Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion” (1997) – Heigl reprised the role played by Mira Sorvino in the film.

In 2005, Heigl had established the chops and the personal background to perfectly fill the role of underwear model-turned-medical intern Isobel Stevens for a mid-season replacement medical drama called “Grey’s Anatomy.” The year “Grey’s” premiered, Heigl had appeared in her first big screen comedy, the low-brow Farrelly Brothers flick, “The Ringer.” The film was not a huge success, but Heigl’s handling of the material obviously made an impression on writer-director Judd Apatow, who cast Heigl in the lead in his one-night-stand-whoops story “Knocked Up” (2007).