Actress Katherine Heigl has revealed some surprising things about her career…
Katherine Heigl started modeling while a child and eventually appeared in several television commercials.
She then went on and made her Hollywood debut in 1992 in That Night.
After graduating from high school she moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.
She quickly found regular work, including in the comic fantasy Wish upon a Star (1996) and the horror film Bride of Chucky (1998).
In 1999 she landed a role in the science-fiction TV series Roswell, which became a cult hit, and garnered much attention as the alien Isabel.
After Roswell ended in 2002, she starred in several television movies, including Love Comes Softly (2003) and a sequel, Love’s Enduring Promise (2004).
In 2005 however, Heigl got her big break when she was cast as Dr. Isobel (Izzie) Stevens in Grey’s Anatomy.
The dramatic series, which was created by Shonda Rhimes centers on the lives of surgical interns and was an immediate success, making Heigl a star.
In 2007 she received an Emmy Award for best supporting actress.
However, she left the show in 2010.
She continued to do feature films…
But it was not until her role in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up in 2007 that she scored a major hit.
Their eldest child, Naleigh, was born in South Korea, and they adopted her in 2009 when she was just 9 months old.
Then in 2012, they adopted their daughter Adalaide, 8, and Heigl gave birth to their son Joshua, 4, in 2017.
Heigl had an emotional response on The View after seeing past footage of her now fourteen-year-old daughter, Naleigh.
The actress visited the talk show on Monday with Naleigh and was shown a precious 2012 clip of her daughter running to her on the stage to give her a sweet hug.
When asked why she was getting emotional, Heigl explained that early in her adopted daughter’s life, she feared she had missed out on bonding with her due to her intense work schedule on Grey’s Anatomy.
“Naleigh came to us at nine months, and three days later I got on a plane and went to work in Atlanta,” Heigl explained.
“At the time, becoming a new mother, I was just like, ‘I got it. I got it. I can handle this.’ They’ve told us we can have it all. We can have careers and have families and it’s all gonna work out.”
She then admitted that she “never saw” her daughter as a baby and feared her daughter wouldn’t love her.
“I was at work with three triplets who were playing my goddaughter, and I spent more time with them than I did with my new daughter. And she bonded with my husband [Josh Kelley], of course, he was with her. So I was always afraid that I had missed that opportunity to really bond with her and that she didn’t love me,” Heigl shared.
She has also opened up about her career…
On The Late Show With David Letterman, Heigl revealed all about her tenure on Grey’s Anatomy.
“Our first day back was Wednesday. It was — I’m going to keep saying this because I hope it embarrasses them — a 17-hour day, which I think is cruel and mean.
“I started a family, and it changed everything.
“It changed my desire to work full-time. I went on family leave and just got to be a [mom], and it changed my whole perspective… that was really the turning point,” she said.
“I think with Grey’s at that time, I didn’t feel I had any other choice.
“I was breaking, it was breaking me, and I was young,” she added.
“I hadn’t garnered enough experience and wisdom yet to get myself through it with less heightened anxiety.
“I mean, I was vibrating at a level that I was gonna get sick and, you know, I did get mentally sick,” Heigl continued.
“I look back at it and sometimes I go, ‘God, I wish I had just calmed down a moment’. Taken a breath, thought it through, had some conversations about this possibility. What about this possibility? How about if I do, you know, just this many episodes a season?
“Like, if I could have found a way to work within it, that could have also worked for me. But I only saw it as this one thing: I was up here at a level of intensity that was not healthy for me. And I just kind of fled in a panic,” she concluded.