There is a moment in 27 Dresses - I'm sure it will happen to you if you choose to spend an hour and a half of your life on this film - when you think to yourself: "Does the world really need another always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride romantic comedy?" For me, it happened as the opening credits rolled. It has a plot as predictable as a white meringue dress: a young woman, Jane, is in love with her boss but he falls instead for her younger sister; meanwhile, a charming, rakish newspaper reporter follows Jane around trying to get her to fall in love with him instead. Yes, you've guessed the ending.
I don't mean to be too harsh, because it is what it is: "great romantic comedy fluff," says Katherine Heigl. She's the other reason I can't be too mean about it. She is so likeable and watchable, like Jennifer Aniston but not as
whiny. They might have dyed her hair darker - that old trick! - to turn her into Plain Jane, but it doesn't really work: Heigl is so lovely, it makes the idea that the object of her affection falls for her trashy younger sister utterly unbelievable.
I confess I have a bit of a girl crush on Heigl; - she is funny, intelligent, outspoken and much more grounded than most Hollywood stars - even though today she seems to be inexplicably styled as the Duchess of Kent, having been doused in pearls and had her hair curled and set rigid. She perches on the windowsill of her hotel room and blows smoke out of the window. She smokes two cigarettes in quick succession.
After appearing in last year's Knocked Up, a critical and commercial hit in which Heigl played Alison, a successful young woman impregnated by a stoner loser called Ben, why would she want to be in something as safe and dull as 27 Dresses?
"I loved the script," she says simply. "I thought it was very fun and honest. I liked that she was so flawed, she was kind of a coward and quite selfish. She put herself in circumstances where she could be the martyr and the hero all at the same time."
Heigl, 29, has been in the cast of the US drama Grey's Anatomy, as Dr Izzie Stevens, since 2005 - she won a best actress Emmy for the role last year - but it was Knocked Up that brought her to worldwide attention. The film was criticized for being misogynistic, and in an interview with Vanity Fair, Heigl admitted she thought the film was "a little sexist. It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys."
Those comments provoked quite a backlash, and Heigl was described as ungrateful and a traitor. Some people even suggested she would never work again. Was she surprised at that?
"I was. Maybe it was naive of me," she says. "I think that the reality of starting to become successful is that [some people] want to slate you for something - put you in a box and put a label on what sort of a person you are. I'm not wild, I haven't been to rehab, I don't do anything eccentric - I'm really boring. So that's where they have to go."
She stands by her comment, but says the sexism element "didn't lessen my enjoyment of the movie. That's where the comedy lies, between these polar opposites and stereotypes of female-male behavior. I don't know a lot of guys that act like Ben, but we know that some exist. I don't know a lot of women who act like Alison, but again we know that some women do. Those are the stereotypes, and they're exaggerated. But it seemed to me that she was such a stiff, she had such a stick up her ass. I wish she had been a little more fun.
"I would never want to be malicious or ignorant," she continues, "but I didn't think that comment was any of those things. It was my opinion and I'm allowed to have one. Isn't it the land of the free?"
She laughs. "Some people think, if you're in the public eye, that you have to have an answer for everything and it has to be boring. I'm glad I didn't know any better, because if I'd been trained to be like that, I think I'd be a very frustrated person." And very boring. "Yes, very boring."
She wasn't afraid to stand up, for instance, and publicly criticize her Grey's colleague Isaiah Washington when he referred to her other colleague and best friend TR Knight, who is gay, as a "faggot."
"It didn't seem like there was any other option," she says now. "It wasn't, like, a moment where I could get up on my soapbox, it was just, 'There is right and wrong, people.' Sometimes it is that black and white."
Her next film is another romantic comedy. Doesn't she want to do more meaty dramas? "I'd like to eventually. But I'm drawn to stories that have a hopeful thread through them. I think it has something to do with my mother. She handles all the things that happen in her life, some of them very tragic and horrible, always with a thread of hope. She never gave up on the idea that life could still be good and worth living."
Heigl, who grew up in Connecticut, was seven when her older brother Jason was killed in a car accident. "Everybody suffered in different ways," she recalls. "I was too young ... . What I lost with my brother dying was more the relationship I would have had with him had he lived. But for my mother and father, and my older brother and sister, it screwed everything up for a very long time and took a long time for us to be able to function as a family again without him."
It must mean you grow up with a sense of perspective, I suggest. "Yes, I think it does. It's hard to take something like this job too seriously. It's hard to take anything too seriously after that happens."
One of the results of Jason's death was that the Heigls converted to the Mormon faith. Is she still a believer? "I still love the theology of the Mormon religion and think it is a wonderful way to grow up," she says. "But I think any real commitment to religion takes time, effort, energy. I just got really lazy and it's hard to get yourself up on Sunday morning." Still, she has enough religion not to have wanted to live with her husband, the musician Josh Kelley, before they were married at the end of last year.
Heigl appeared in adverts as a child, and small parts in films and TV followed, but it wasn't until Grey's Anatomy and Knocked Up came along that she found success. Are there advantages to having to wait to hit the big time? "If you'd asked me five years ago, I would have said no. But now, yes. The timing couldn't have been better. It's hard enough, as a 29-year-old, to stay grounded, but I think five years ago it would have been twice as hard."
Her reasonably relaxed attitude to the industry shows when it comes to questions about the pressure to be thin and beautiful. I notice that she has had her teeth straightened (she used to have little teeth that stuck out either side of her front teeth), which takes away some of the character of her face, but while she is slim, she's not Hollywood skinny.
"I understand what it is I'm trying to sell and what it is I want people to buy," she says. "I'm never going to be a (US) size two but I do try to maintain a certain look that appeals. Unfortunately, it keeps changing - it went from uber-thin and then that was wrong, then it went to curvy, and then that was wrong. It's like, 'God, what do you want?' I can't reform myself every time the trends change."
She was asked to lose weight for Knocked Up, and she agreed "because they thought it would be funnier if she was in amazing shape and then got pregnant and started losing her body. I thought so too. But other than that ... . I'm always a little delusional. I always thought I was normal. And I was normal, but just not in Hollywood."
Heigl
continued from p14
“I would never want to be malicious or ignorant,” she continues, “but I didn’t think that comment was any of those things. It was my opinion and I’m allowed to have one. Isn’t it the land of the free?”
She laughs. “Some people think, if you’re in the public eye, that you have to have an answer for everything and it has to be boring. I’m glad I didn’t know any better, because if I’d been trained to be like that, I think I’d be a very frustrated person.” And very boring. “Yes, very boring.”
She wasn’t afraid to stand up, for instance, and publicly criticize her Grey’s colleague Isaiah Washington when he referred to her other colleague and best friend TR Knight, who is gay, as a “faggot.”
“It didn’t seem like there was any other option,” she says now. “It wasn’t, like, a moment where I could get up on my soapbox, it was just, ‘There is right and wrong, people.’ Sometimes it is that black and white.”
Her next film is another romantic comedy. Doesn’t she want to do more meaty dramas? “I’d like to eventually. But I’m drawn to stories that have a hopeful thread through them. I think it has something to do with my mother. She handles all the things that happen in her life, some of them very tragic and horrible, always with a thread of hope. She never gave up on the idea that life could still be good and worth living.”
Heigl, who grew up in Connecticut, was seven when her older brother Jason was killed in a car accident. “Everybody suffered in different ways,” she recalls. “I was too young ... . What I lost with my brother dying was more the relationship I would have had with him had he lived. But for my mother and father, and my older brother and sister, it screwed everything up for a very long time and took a long time for us to be able to function as a family again without him.”
It must mean you grow up with a sense of perspective, I suggest. “Yes, I think it does. It’s hard to take something like this job too seriously. It’s hard to take anything too seriously after that happens.”
One of the results of Jason’s death was that the Heigls converted to the Mormon faith. Is she still a believer? “I still love the theology of the Mormon religion and think it is a wonderful way to grow up,” she says. “But I think any real commitment to religion takes time, effort, energy. I just got really lazy and it’s hard to get yourself up on Sunday morning.” Still, she has enough religion not to have wanted to live with her husband, the musician Josh Kelley, before they were married at the end of last year.
Heigl appeared in adverts as a child, and small parts in films and TV followed, but it wasn’t until Grey’s Anatomy and Knocked Up came along that she found success. Are there advantages to having to wait to hit the big time? “If you’d asked me five years ago, I would have said no. But now, yes. The timing couldn’t have been better. It’s hard enough, as a 29-year-old, to stay grounded, but I think five years ago it would have been twice as hard.”
Her reasonably relaxed attitude to the industry shows when it comes to questions about the pressure to be thin and beautiful. I notice that she has had her teeth straightened (she used to have little teeth that stuck out either side of her front teeth), which takes away some of the character of her face, but while she is slim, she’s not Hollywood skinny.
“I understand what it is I’m trying to sell and what it is I want people to buy,” she says. “I’m never going to be a (US) size two but I do try to maintain a certain look that appeals. Unfortunately, it keeps changing — it went from uber-thin and then that was wrong, then it went to curvy, and then that was wrong. It’s like, ‘God, what do you want?’ I can’t reform myself every time the trends change.”
She was asked to lose weight for Knocked Up, and she agreed “because they thought it would be funnier if she was in amazing shape and then got pregnant and started losing her body. I thought so too. But other than that ... . I’m always a little delusional. I always thought I was normal. And I was normal, but just not in Hollywood.”
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