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Researching her role as a perennial bridesmaid in 27 Dresses was as easy as walking up the aisle for Katherine Heigl. Preparing for the success that has come her way in recent times was another matter altogether, as she tells FOCUS.
Last year Katherine Heigl was the sensible half of cinema's oddest romantic pairing in Knocked Up, falling for the dishevelled charms of Seth Rogen in the surprise hit of the year.
Suddenly she was an overnight success after 17 years in the business. Having made her screen debut in 1992 she played Gerard Depardieu's 14 year old daughter in My Father The Hero in 1994 and even survived being cast as Steven Seagal’s neice in Under Siege 2.
The films she made were certainly varied but largely unremarkable, the television work transient bar the belated success she has found in medical series Grey's Anatomy. All of which led up to the moment when audiences fell in love with her and she emerged as a fully formed movie star.
Now with 27 Dresses she takes on the challenge of a lead role, a daunting prospect that she achieves with grace and no little skill.
"I'm a huge romantic comedy fan," she smiles, "for all the years I've been in this business I had hoped and dreamed and wished to some day be in a romantic comedy myself. This was the first one that I read that I really laughed out loud to, alone in my living room.
"I just really loved the characters, I thought they were very honestly flawed and yet still very endearing and welcoming, there was something about them that I felt people - myself included - could identify with but they weren't so shiny and perfect all the time."
The irony in this story, of a good girl who has resigned herself to be a perpetual bridesmaid both metaphorically and literally, is that the release of the film in the US came weeks after her own nuptials to singer Josh Kelley.
"I was actually kind of annoyed," the 29 year old sighs, "I had been planning my wedding for nine months and then they decided to release the film a week or two after I got married. It was like, 'I've had enough of weddings and the whole thing,' but it worked out well in promoting the movie because I had some personal experience as well."
There are some in her profession that you would suspect of cynically promoting their new film with their own wedding, or even subsidising the latter with the former. But it says much for Katherine Heigl that she is not one of them, her lucid responses to even the most banal questions suggest a thoughtful, kind hearted person who is unlikely to be snapped falling out of some nightclub. For the pitfalls of modern celebrity include the attention of increasingly aggressive packs of paparazzi photographers scrutinising you at every turn.
"If you look a certain way they just kill you," she nods. "I have enough of an ego that that’s embarrassing for me. If I am going out shopping and I know that I'm going to be photographed, I try to pull it together."
She recognises also the responsibilities of being perceived as a role model to young women and teenage girls that come with her fame, though this prompts a painful mea culpa over her nicotine habit that is a little too earnest to British ears. She seems a genuinely nice person, it would be a pity if this new found level of success cannot be enjoyed.
"Everything's changed," she explains. "The level of success has changed, the level of attention has changed, certainly the level of respect in the industry, and the level of opportunity. There's nothing that’s even remotely the same except for my family and friends. My whole wardrobe has changed too."
She smiles again, not in a triumphalist way but in a manner that sends the message that nothing will ever be quite the same again. In career terms Katherine Heigl is a bridesmaid no more.
ANWAR BRETT
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