Actors - Katherine Heigl

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Katherine Heigl

	Actors - Katherine Heigl

Katherine Marie Heigl (born November 24 1978) is an American actress, perhaps best known for her roles on the TV series Roswell and Grey's Anatomy.

Early life

Heigl was born in Washington, D.C. to Paul Heigl (a German American accountant) and Nancy (an Irish American); she was raised a Mormon. A few years after Heigl's birth, the family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where her older brother, Jason, died in 1986 of injuries suffered in a car accident. He had been thrown from the back of a pickup truck, and doctors determined Jason was brain-dead. Despite their grief, the family decided to donate his organs. This has motivated Katherine to become a strong proponent of organ donation.

When she was nine years old, an aunt visiting the family decided to take a number of photographs of the young Heigl. After returning to her home in New York, the aunt sent the photos to a number of modeling agencies, all with the permission of Katherine's parents. Within a few weeks, Heigl had been signed as a child model.

Career

Almost immediately, a client slated Heigl for use in a magazine advertisement. Television jobs soon followed, the first in a national spot for Cheerios breakfast cereal. It was not long until she landed her first big-screen debut in the 1992 movie That Night. After meeting fast success and enjoying her new-found career, she realized that acting was her passion.

Heigl appeared as Christina Sebastian in Steven Soderbergh's Depression-era drama King of the Hill
, before being cast her first leading role as Nicole 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.

She then played opposite Steven Seagal in the role of Sarah in the 1995 action thriller, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
. Despite an increased focus on acting, she still modeled extensively, appearing regularly in magazines such as Seventeen. She took the lead role in Disney's made-for-television film Wish Upon a Star in 1996. It was also in 1996 that Heigl's parents divorced. After her high school graduation in 1997, she and her mother moved into a 4-bedroom house in Malibu Canyon, Los Angeles. Heigl's mother then became her manager.

In 1998, she co-starred with Peter Fonda in a re-working of the classic Shakespearian play The Tempest, set during the American Civil War. Later that year, she starred in the successful horror film, Bride of Chucky
. 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.

To publicize her role on Roswell, she appeared on the covers of magazines such as TV Guide, Maxim, and Teen as well as FHM. She later appeared in the FHM and Maxim calendars and FHM's annual 100 sexiest women in the world. While Roswell was in production, Heigl worked on several films, including, 100 Girls
, an independent 2001 film in which she played competitive tomboy Arlene, and Valentine, a horror film starring David Boreanaz and Denise Richards in which she played medical student Shelley Fisher.

In the spring of 2001, Heigl accepted a role in Ground Zero, a television thriller scheduled to be telecast that fall, which was based on the bestselling novel, The Seventh Power, by James Mills. 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, but which ends up in the hands of a terrorist following betrayal by a fellow student. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, the film was shelved when its plot was considered too inappropriate, and re-emerged in 2003 under the title Critical Assembly. After the terrorist attacks, Heigl recorded a passionate public service announcement for the American Red Cross in an effort to help raise money for victims.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Katherine Heigl ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Katherine Heigl; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Actors - Katherine Heigl

Early life

Career

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay