Katherine Marie Heigl is an American actress. She was born on November 24, 1978 in Washington, D.C. as the youngest of four children. She spent most of her childhood in the town of new Canaan.

Tragically, when Heigl was only 7 her older brother Jason was thrown from the back of a pick up truck and declared brain-dead. The family had to make the difficult decision of donating his organs. In turn, many years later this motivates Heigl to speak out about the importance of organ donation.

Katherine was at first a child model, modeling her aunt's hair care products. With the permission of Katherine's parents her aunt sent her modeling pictures out to agencies and in a few weeks Katherine was signed to Wilhelmina, a respectable international modeling agency.

She starred in a number of commercials and made her big screen debut in the movie called "That Night" (1992). Then went on to star Steven Sodenberg's drama "King of the Hill" (1993), until she finally landed the role of the rebellious teenager in "My Father the Hero" (1994), alongside Gerard Depardieu. During this time she was balancing her high school work and her modeling and acting obligations. In the last few years she has starred in a number of films such as "Knocked Up" (2007)and "27 Dresses" (2008) all of which were box office hits and is getting more and more thanks to her breakthrough role in the mega successful TV series "Gray's Anatomy". She's played one of the lead characters (Izzie Stevens) in this drama series since it's beginning in 2005. In 2007 she won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Izzie Stevens.

In December 2007 she married her boyfriend Josh Kelley. The couple has one adopted child, a girl by the name of Nancy Leigh (after Katherine's mother and sister).