Biography:

Birth name
Katherine Marie Heigl

Nickname
Katie

Height
5' 9" (1.75 m)

Katherine Marie Heigl was born in Washington D.C, USA on the November 24, 1978 to parents Nancy and Paul. A short time afterwards, the Heigl family moved to New Canaan, Connecticut, where Katherine was to spend the majority of her childhood. The youngest member of her family, Katherine, or "Katie" as she is nicknamed, has two elder siblings, John and Meg. Tragically, her older brother Jason died in 1986 of brain injuries suffered in a car accident, after being thrown from the back of a pickup truck. When doctors determined Jason was brain-dead, the family made the difficult decision to donate his organs. Not only did this painful chapter give Katherine a greater perspective and appreciation for life, but it has motivated her to use her celebrity to promote the importance of organ donation.

Katherine was first thrust into the limelight as a child model. An aunt, visiting the family in New Canaan, took a number of photographs of her niece, then aged 9, in a series of poses to advertise a hair care product she had invented. Upon returning to New York, and with permission from Katherine's parents, she sent the photos to a number of modeling agencies. Within a few weeks, Katherine had been signed to Wilhelmina, a renowned international modeling agency.

Almost immediately, she made her debut in a magazine advertisement, and soon followed this with an inaugural television appearance in a national commercial for Cheerios breakfast cereal. Following a number of commercials and modeling assignments for Sears and Lord & Taylor, Katherine made her big-screen debut in That Night (1992), which starred Juliette Lewis and C. Thomas Howell. It was then that she realized that acting rather than modeling was her passion. In 1993, Katherine appeared in Steven Soderbergh's critically acclaimed depression-era drama King of the Hill (1993), before landing her first leading role as a rebellious teenager alongside Gérard Depardieu in My Father the Hero (1994). During this time, Katherine continued to attend New Canaan High School, balancing her academic studies with work on films and modeling, which she undertook during holidays, vacations and weekends.

In 1995, she played opposite Steven Seagal in the role of Sarah Ryback in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995), which represented her first "action genre" film. Acting was now becoming a stronger focus for Katherine, although she still modeled extensively, appearing regularly in magazines such as Seventeen. Television appearances on "The Tonight Show" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" soon followed, before she took the lead role in Disney's Wish Upon a Star (1996) in 1996. It was also during 1996 that Katherine's parents divorced, and following her graduation from high school in 1997, she moved with her mother into a 4-bedroom house in Malibu Canyon, Los Angeles. This enabled Katherine to focus upon acting with the guidance and support of her mother, who now managed her career.

In 1997, Katherine portrayed Taffy Entwhistle, Rita Hayworth's stand-in, in the movie Stand-ins (1997), and was also cast as the beauteous Princess Ilene in the European production Prince Valiant (1997). Katherine then branched into the world of television films, co-starring with Peter Fonda in a re-working of the classic Shakespearian play Tempest, The (1998) (TV), updated with an American Civil War theme. This film saw her take on the important role of Miranda Prosper, a young woman torn between the love for her father and that of a Union soldier. Bug Buster (1998) and Bride of Chucky (1998) represented a venture into the horror genre for Katherine. While both films could be described as rather tongue-in-cheek despite their gory emphases, "Bride of Chucky" was the better received, both critically and commercially.

In 1999, Katherine decided to venture into the world of series television when she accepted the role of the haughty yet vulnerable Isabel Evans on "Roswell" (1999), a show which blended teen angst with sci-fi drama. Though she had never planned to embark on a career in television, the role of Isabel, a teenager with a secret life, was an offer Katherine found impossible to refuse. In the series, Isabel, her brother Max (Jason Behr), and their friend Michael (Brendan Fehr) are aliens passing as humans in Roswell, New Mexico, as they desperately try to hide the truth from government agencies, the people of Roswell, and even their own adopted families. To publicize her role on "Roswell", Katherine graced the covers of magazines such as TV Guide, Maxim, and Teen, and was interviewed on "Later with Cynthia Garrett" and "The Craig Kilborn Show." Along with her mother Nancy, she also appeared on an episode of the Sci-Fi Television talk show _Crossing Over with John Edward (1999)_ , during which she spoke with John Edward, a psychic medium, about her late brother, Jason.

During the three years Roswell was in production, Katherine found time to work on several movies. 100 Girls (2000), an independent film released in 2001, is the story of a college freshman who meets the girl of his dreams in an elevator during a black-out, and spends the rest of the movie trying to find her again. Katherine's cameo role is that of Arlene, the competitive Tomboy. The second film, Valentine (2001), a horror film starring David Boreanaz and Denise Richards, appeared in U.S. theatres on February 2, 2001. In this movie, which is based upon the 1996 novel by Tom Savage, Katherine plays Shelley, a medical student who meets a sudden demise.

In the spring of 2001, Katherine accepted a role in "Ground Zero," a two-hour, original television thriller scheduled to be telecast that fall on NBC. Katherine and Kerr Smith (Dawson's Creek) co-starred as brilliant and politically concerned college students, who build a nuclear device to illustrate the need for a change in national priorities, but are betrayed by a fellow student when the bomb ends up in the hands of a terrorist. Unfortunately, the telefilm, directed by Eric Laneuville, written by Tom Vaughan, and based on the bestseller, "The Seventh Power," by James Mills, was shelved when its storyline was deemed too close for comfort to the events of September 11, 2001. At this time, the future of "Ground Zero" remains uncertain.

Since the cancellation of "Roswell" in the spring of 2002, Katherine has been busy with various projects, including an appearance on UPN's update of the classic television series, "The Twilight Zone". That episode, entitled "Cradle of Darkness", airs October 2, 2002, and features Katherine in the role of a woman who goes back in time to stop one of the most notorious murderers in history. In addition, she has completed a television movie, _Descendant (2002)_ , described as a psychological thriller inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." No release date has been announced, but the film is scheduled to appear on HBO/Cinemax. Katherine has also been tapped to play the role of Romy in ABC/Touchstone's two-hour telepic "Romy and Michele: Behind the Velvet Rope," a prequel to the 1997 feature film Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997). Production is scheduled to begin in October 2002.

During the summer of 2002, Katherine made a major decision in the direction of her career when she signed on for representation in all areas with the William Morris Agency, one of the biggest and most prestigious agencies in the entertainment industry. She is now being managed by Stephanie Simon and Jason Newman at Untitled Entertainment