Once upon a time, Katherine Heigl was among the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.
Then she dissed Knocked Up and Grey's Anatomy.
It's been a rocky road ever since, paved with mea culpas and cat litter ads, but she still
hasn't made a comeback.
Here's why Hollywood won't cast Katherine Heigl anymore.
Dissing her own projects
To this day, Katherine Heigl's biggest blockbuster movie is Knocked Up, from way back in 2007,
but she has a bit of a beef with the romantic comedy.
Apparently she wasn't thrilled with the gender politics in the Judd Apatow-directed smash.
She told Vanity Fair in 2008,
"It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable,
goofy, fun-loving guys."
That wasn't the only time Heigl slammed a project that made her a star.
In June 2008, she withdrew from Emmy consideration for her role of Izzie on Grey's Anatomy, despite
winning best supporting actress in a drama series the year before.
She explained her decision by saying,
"I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination."
That's probably not what the Grey's writers room was hoping to hear in the middle of awards
season.
Little bang for the buck
Despite thinking that Knocked Up was sexist, Heigl went on to star in a slew of poorly
selected rom-coms in the following years.
Most notable was 2009's The Ugly Truth, which played up some seriously screwed up gender
stereotypes
“On the one hand, you have to push the guy away with cold indifference.
On the other, you have to be a sexually teasing tornado.”
Heigl's other big screen work outside of Knocked Up was also largely critically panned, and
many of her films were box office flops as well.
The Ugly Truth and Life As We Know It were profitable but poorly reviewed.
Meanwhile, Killers, One For The Money, and The Big Wedding were rotten both critically
and commercially.
Studios will only tolerate so many failures before they quit casting a star, especially
if that star is a woman.
In terms of hard numbers, Forbes reported in December 2013 that Heigl was Hollywood's
most overpaid actress, netting studios a return on investment of just $3.50 for every $1 she
was paid.
"Desperately difficult" to work with
In 2013, an insider who worked on Life As We Know It told The Hollywood Reporter that
working with Heigl led to "desperately difficult situations."
This included wardrobe issues, refusing to get out of her trailer, constantly questioning
the script, and taking forever to close her deal with the studio.
A staffer who worked on 27 Dresses had a similar experience, lamenting Heigl's "movie-star
demands" and general sense of entitlement.
Despite this, when Heigl was later asked about her difficult reputation, she didn't see a
need to apologize.
At a 2004 Television Critics Association event, she said,
"I certainly don't see myself as being difficult; I would never intend to be difficult.
I don't think my mother sees herself as being difficult."
"GET OUT!"
Out-of-control momager
Heigl's mother, Nancy, has served as her manager since the beginning of her career, but it
hasn't exactly worked out well.
A source told OK!
Magazine in 2015 that even though Nancy isn't a producer, she still acts like one.
She believes that she has a right to make decisions, leading her to anger a lot of people
in the process.
This source also claimed that Katherine has damaged her reputation because her mother
has encouraged her worst behavior.
Another insider echoed those sentiments to The Hollywood Reporter, noting Nancy's profanity
and tendency to insult the craft service and wardrobe department.
"I heard you felt that Katherine was different than most kids when she was younger.
How?”
“Well, not really different, just you could recognized her talents very easily.”
Tanking TV shows
Heigl has reoriented a lot of her recent efforts back to TV lately, but she's struggled to
re-discover the success she had earlier in her career.
The NBC espionage drama State Of Affairs arrived with a lot of hype in 2014, but it was canceled
after just one season due to lackluster ratings.
Her next TV project, the legal drama Doubt, premiered on CBS in February 2017, and it
was canned after only two episodes aired.
Her luck seemed to turn around a bit when she signed on to join the cast of USA's Suits
in January 2018.
The New York-set legal drama is still going strong after eight seasons, though its ratings
have declined a bit since Meghan Markle left the show to go become a princess.
How she can turn it around
Heigl seems to be self-aware, at least in terms of what projects she's chosen recently.
For one thing, she's not signing on to every single romantic comedy that comes her way
anymore.
She explained to Marie Claire in 2014 that she loves rom-coms, but she admits that she
may have relied on that genre "a little too hard."
She recognized that she had stopped challenging herself, which can wear you down if you're
a creative person.
As for her history of on-set difficulty, a source close to Heigl told The Hollywood Reporter
in 2013 that she's truly trying to behave better.
As the source put it,
"The only way to do that is to go to work in film or television with good people and
for those people to have good things to report back."
Here's hoping that Heigl finds that next big hit and gets along with her co-stars and crew
members while she's at it!
"This is my life, David! It's Mine!"