Now that she's a married mom of an adopted daughter, the outspoken Katherine Heigl is learning to think before she speaks.
Katherine Heigl is at home in Los Angeles's Los Feliz neighborhood, pulling cheese after cheese out of her fully stocked fridge.
"This is for us," she says, beaming as she loads crackers onto a plate. Then she kisses her 18-month-old adopted Korean daughter, Naleigh (a combination of Nancy, for Katherine's mother and longtime manager, and Leigh, the middle name of her adopted sister, also Korean). "Mommy has to do an interview," Katherine tells her. "And eat some cheese."
She heads to an outdoor deck, leaving Naleigh to watch The Backyardigans with her husband, singer Josh Kelley, and Mojo, one of their six dogs. For the moment, the rest of the pack is at the park, so the house is relatively quiet. When Katherine found Mojo on the set of 27 Dresses, Josh told her no more dogs. "I started crying," says Katherine, who everyone calls Katie. "I said, 'Where's your heart? Where's your soul? I'm supposed to be marrying you, and you don't know who I am by now,' and he's like, 'Fine, just take the dog. Jesus.'"
But lately life has been focused more on Naleigh, whom she and Josh adopted last September, at nine months. Though Naleigh has been described in the press as special-needs, she was actually born with a congenital heart problem that was fixed via open-heart surgery before she left Korea. "Her heart is 100 percent fine now. She has a scar, so she won't be wearing bikinis, which is fine by us," Katherine explains, unembarrassed by her overprotectiveness. "A lot of children don't find forever homes because they're on that special-needs list, even if it's because of something as simple as her mother smoked cigarettes for a month, not knowing she was pregnant. That's not so huge that you couldn't handle it."
When Naleigh arrived, Katherine, 31, was in Atlanta working on Life as We Know It, to be released later this year. In a bizarre life-imitating-art scenario, the movie happens to be about a woman who unexpectedly takes custody of a baby.
"It was crazy, because as my character was learning how to take care of a one-year-old, I was too," says Katherine, dressed in a cardigan and jeans. Her hair is pulled back, and a light dusting of makeup covers up any mommy-induced exhaustion. "But as I was working with these gorgeous little triplets who play my child, I was feeling bad that I was spending more time with them than with my own kid. And that broke my heart."
In some ways, the experience on Life as We Know It precipitated a three-month-long respite (and delayed family leave from Grey's Anatomy) at her new vacation home in Utah--the longest time, in fact, that she'd spent with Josh since the two started dating five years ago. (They married in Park City in 2007; Katherine was raised Mormon.) "There were a good few weeks when I almost smothered him with his pillow," she says. But that's marriage, she adds: "two people with totally different lives and totally different experiences just trying to fit."
But more significantly, the three months with Naleigh convinced Katherine it was time to move on from Izzie Stevens, the neurotic resident she played for six seasons on Grey's. The role won her an Emmy in 2007, but as the press has documented well, it's been rocky.
Though some use the evidence to suggest she's a diva, one can argue that Katherine wouldn't be the star she is today without her ballsy moves and vocal, opinionated point of view. She called her first hit, Knocked Up, "a little sexist," stood up for gay best friend T.R. Knight at the Golden Globes, and bowed out of the Emmy race in 2008 because "I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination." Without that candor, she'd be just another milquetoast starlet.
"I spent so many years just saying what I felt without thinking about the ramifications, without understanding that I have this opinion but not everyone might share that opinion and now they don't like me because of it. That was really awkward. I hate it when people say this, but I'm a people pleaser," she explains. "I was really raised with the idea that it's important to be honest and to share your experiences, both disappointing and exhilarating. But sometimes I think the American public just wants to see my life as good fortune. They don't want to know about the day-to-day. It ruins the fantasy. It's lame to say that I'm a normal girl, but I think I am."
And like any normal girl, Katherine's learning that baby can get in the way of a romantic evening with her hubby, like when Naleigh threw up on her lingerie. "If parent time interferes with sexy time, that's that," she says, laughing.
She also finds it a challenge to keep up with the fashions of fellow celebrities' daughters, like Suri Cruise or Zahara Jolie-Pitt. "Dude, I try, but I'm not nailing the baby fashion. It's intimidating. I get beautiful outfits from Gap and baby Juicy, but I'm not layering it or putting her in Prada flats. It's really stressing me out." She also doesn't want her daughter to grow up to be a spoiled rich kid. "I want her privilege to afford her to seek many different things that might fulfill her. I don't want her to have a Beemer on her 16th birthday or spend the summer at a beach house with friends. Nope. You want a beach house, you pay for it."
Now that Grey's Anatomy is no longer keeping her in Hollywood, a place she describes as "high school on steroids," she and Kelley are considering a move to Nashville so he can be closer to his country-music career. Perhaps Naleigh will become "a Korean country-music star. That'd be sick," she laughs. "I know she's going to get pushed into music." But she's not sure if her mother, with whom she lunches on a regular basis, will follow, which gives Katherine pause.
"The relationship I have with my mother is rare, and I know for some people it looks like I'm a real mama's girl," she says. "I never cut the apron strings, but that's one thing I will never deny. It has saved me."
But Katherine recognizes that despite the positives in her life--leaving a hit show on the upswing, a burgeoning film career (the action comedy Killers, opposite Ashton Kutcher, who "looks so hot with his shirt off," opens in June), starting a family--she still has work to do.
"Now it's time to reevaluate and grow up. I hope by my mid-30s, I get to the point where I don't doubt myself," Katherine explains. "I'm going to make mistakes and say stupid things, but I won't have to sit in a room in the dark and wonder, 'Am I a bad person?' It will be 'Okay, Katie, enough with the drama.'"
