Diva behavior was never there to begin with, actress says

May 21, 2010 14:15 GMT  ·  By

Despite always trying to be honest and not pretend she’s not something other than she is, Katherine Heigl is not really among people’s favorite celebrity. In the June 2010 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, the actress tackles the same topic once more, saying that, at the end of the day, she’s just a normal girl and talk of how she’s always such a diva is nothing short of crass exaggeration.

After announcing that she would no longer appear on “Grey’s Anatomy” because she wanted to focus more on her family, especially since she’d also adopted a baby girl, Katherine started telling the media she believed most of her trouble came from not knowing when to shut up. Because she’s always bent on speaking the truth, her words get twisted in the media to sell magazines or, perhaps just as worse, completely misunderstood.

People take honesty for feeling superior, the actress believes. At the same time, she admits she’s learned that speaking her mind all the time is not really helping her with making more friends because she often says things she doesn’t consider properly and which, therefore, can hurt others. “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,” Heigl tells Harper’s.

As for being a diva, that couldn’t be farther from the truth: deep down inside, Katherine feels almost a compulsory need to please everybody, even though she resents it when others point it out to her. “I hate it when people say this, but I’m a people pleaser. 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 a 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,” the actress explains.

Part of being a normal girl also means being a devoted wife and mother – which is not to say that either comes with great ease. For Heigl, marriage is when two people who have lived most of their life apart are trying to bring everything together and make it work. So far, she and hubby Josh Kelley have done a wonderful job at it.