Getting through high school can be hard. There’s finding a date
for the prom, figuring out your place in the world, not to mention
acne. Throw into that being from another planet and you begin
to understand what Katherine Heigl’s character is going through
on the WB drama Roswell.
Heigl plays Isabel Evans, a somewhat clairvoyant alien high school
student in Roswell, New Mexico. “The real genius of the show,”
she says, “is that all kids have felt alienated in high school.
All kids feel different, like they don’t fit in, and, like the
characters in the show, their lives are a process of discovery.”
For Heigl, 22, that process began at the pre-adolescent age of
nine, when her aunt sent photographs of the young beauty to several
modeling agencies in New York. After a brief stint as a child
model, Katherine soon found herself doing commercials and by the
time she was 12, had appeared in her first film, That Night.
Heigl says, “I was fortunate to discover so young something I’m
so passionate about and something I want to spend the rest of
my life doing.”
Her big break came when she was 14, starring opposite Gerard Depardieu
in My Father the Hero.
“Gerard was wonderful,” Heigl recalls. “I remember him telling
me ‘Don’t be a star, be an actor.’ And that was very influential
for me coming from him.”
In all, Heigl has appeared in eight films, with two more coming
out this year. February 14 sees the release of Valentine, and
100 Girls should be out later this year.
For now, Heigl is focusing on her character in Roswell, and looking
toward her future. She says, “For me, the most important thing
is production. I would really like to get to the point where I
have the ability to put out the kind of material I’d like to see
out there and the kind of material I’d like to be in. But,” she
adds, “who knows what will happen five years from now?”
Her big break came when she was 14, starring opposite Gerard Depardieu
in My Father the Hero.