Katherine Heigl is embracing her life as a perimenopausal woman who’s already experienced the height of her career — and she’s not afraid to show it.
“I wasn’t thinking about [aging] in my 20s, right? In my 20s, I was sort of at the height of my career, and I was getting to do all the roles I had always wanted to be able to do,” Heigl, 46, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, May 1, about her success following her breakout role as Izzie Stevens on Grey’s Anatomy. “I started as a child actor but by the time I got into my mid to late teens, you know, I was dying to be the romantic lead. I was dying to do some comedy. So I was so excited and on cloud nine getting to do what I had been sort of hustling to do for so many years. And you don’t think about the expiration date on it.”
Heigl said lead film roles in Knocked Up, 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth and Life As We Know It came fast and furious amid her Grey’s fame, but that she accepted she wouldn’t “be the ingenue forever.”
“When I turned 40 I realized, ‘Oh, that’s pretty much over.’ Like, there’s a young generation that’s coming up and I had my time and it was glorious, and it’s kind of done now,” she admitted. “And not to say that I can’t be the romantic lead in something at 46 — that women in their 40s don’t have a romantic love life or that they aren’t funny or that, you know, they can’t be the lead of a story. Of course they can. I am still the star of my own life. I find it interesting and compelling. I feel like others would, as well. And I feel like so many women in their 40s and 50s and 60s have compelling, interesting lives that we’d all be interested in seeing.”
She added: “So it’s not to say, like, ‘Oh, you can’t do that anymore.’ It’s going to be very different. You’re not the ingenue, and the ingenue is really a valuable role in Hollywood. And it’s sort of, as you get older, you have to fight and say, ‘Yes, but I am still a value and it might look different and it might feel different, but trust me, the story’s worth telling.’ It’s a different fight.”
Heigl noted that her recent role in Netflix’s Firefly Lane was a great project, as it told the stories of two middle-aged women, Tully (Heigl) and Kate (Sarah Chalke).
“I love these two women, and I loved that they were in their 40s [and it was] a significant part of the story,” she said. “You get to see that trajectory of their lives as young women through up until their 40s and their mid 40s. And it’s so beautiful to get to experience a woman’s story that way.”
She did mention, however, that portraying a college-aged student in the show was slightly less-gratifying.
“It was a bit nerve-wracking,” she said. “I was almost 40 when we started to try to play, like, at one point, I think they had us playing 19 in college, and I was like, ‘I think you’re pushing the envelope a bit.’ Like, I get that there’s CGI, but … 19 is different emotionally, too. It’s not just how you look. It’s how you behave. It’s everything. So I just remember, like, the first day trying to play Tully at 22 or something, and was like, ‘Should I just be bouncier? Should I have more elasticity in my limbs?’ Like, I’m stiff. My back hurts. You know, it’s just a whole different bag of tricks, but it really brought it to mind, like, oh yeah, you know, aging is a thing. It’s not just about your face and what’s happening to your face. It’s everything.”
As a brand ambassador for Poise, Heigl aims to break the shame and isolation around aging — namely pelvic floor issues associated with perimenopause, menopause and childbirth. At least 50 percent of women experience bladder leaks, a.k.a the “giggle dribbles,” Heigl being one of them.
“There was a little hesitation, for sure, because you’re basically, like, telling the world about your personal, perimenopausal journey, you know? And I’m like, ‘Do I want everyone to be aware of what my body is doing?’ But then I just felt like, I know because of my girlfriends, my sister. I know I’m not the only one this happens to and I know that the more we sort of act embarrassed, the more heartbeat we give that,” she explained. “I just decided I don’t want to pretend that these things aren’t happening to me in order to appear, like, I’m what? Forever, eternally youthful? That’s silly.”
Heigl said she takes care of her skin, tries to stay fit and holds gratitude as a working mother. She shares three children — Naleigh, 15, Adalaide, 13, and Joshua, 8 — with her husband, singer Josh Kelley. The couple adopted their daughters in 2009 and 2012, respectively, and Heigl gave birth to their son in 2016.
She admitted that pregnancy changed her body — most predominantly leaving her with a C-section scar she’s dubbed “my hot dog bun.”
“I got away without stretch marks, but I had a cesarean, so I have this scar that created this kind of lump there,” she added. “It looks like a little hot dog bun on my lower belly that will be there forever now. And I think initially I was like, nobody told me that would happen, everybody acted like the cesarean scar would be nothing, and that you’d never even see it, you’d never even notice. And, like, this has changed my body forever, I will never look like I did pre-pregnancy.”
The actress said those intrusive thoughts do her no good as she tries to remember what the scar really represents.
“I had to sort of smack myself and be like, ‘What are you talking about? It was so worth it,’” she said. “I think you have those days where you beat yourself up and think, ‘Oh, I wish I looked like I did when I was 25.’ But then there’s the reality check of, like, you’re not 25 and I wouldn’t want to go back to 25 for all the tea in China. I am very grateful for the existence I’ve had thus far, for another 20 years of life to love, and learn and grow and experience. This is part of that.”
“Our respect for ourselves needs to be paramount,” she concludes, mentioning how important it is for children to see and appreciate their mothers’ changing bodies. “But yeah, I mean, I’m not a perfect person in the way that I, every day, wake up and think, ‘I’m fantastic, I look great.’ Like, no, I have bad days. But, you know, when I gather[ed] my perspective, it was well worth it.”
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