The ‘Unforgettable’ Katherine Heigl
The actress, of ‘Knocked Up’ fame, discusses her new psychological thriller
Acting can be a dangerous business.
Charlize Theron herniated a disc on “Aeon Flux.” Jim Caviezel was struck by lightning during the filming of “The Passion of the Christ.” And Harrison Ford broke his leg shooting “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
While Katherine Heigl didn’t endure anything quite so scary during the making of “Unforgettable,” an aspect of the role took its toll on the actress.
“Playing this character caused me a lot of back pain,” says Heigl. “I was [exhausted] at the end of the day. She held herself very stiffly.
“I actually have a tendency to do that at times when I’m nervous or when I’m trying to contain myself. Everything tends to tighten up and that was Tessa. She was wired so tight.”
The rare thriller written, directed and starring women, “Unforgettable” spins the saga of a fashionable female named Tessa (Heigl) who’s decided to make the life of her ex-husband’s new wife (Rosario Dawson) a living hell.
What begins as Tessa’s simple online spying leads to catfishing and all kinds of bizarre behavior, including contacting the man who once attacked Dawson and giving him Dawson’s new address.
As dastardly as Tessa becomes, Heigl insists she felt quite a bit of sympathy for the character.
“I had compassion for Tessa and I felt sorry for her,” notes the actress, 38. “I identified with her fear, really. Her crazy is really born out of insecurity and the idea that she just is so terrified of not being perfect, of not achieving perfection in her life, in her marriage, and with her child.
“Tessa has some idea that if she isn’t perfect, her whole world will fall apart. The desperation to hold on to [an unattainable ideal], to maintain it, is what drives her to make choices that any sane person wouldn’t make.”
Heigl says she also appreciated how slowly Tessa unravels, going from disturbed to flatout demented over the course of the movie.
“I think there’s a reason for each one of her choices, for why she goes further and further and further and that’s because she’s not getting the results she wants,” says Heigl.
At one point, Tessa turns her fury on her young daughter.
“The hardest thing I had to do [as Tessa] was make that little girl cry,” recalls Heigl. “Even now I feel so terrible about it . ... That’s when I started to lose a little bit of my compassion for Tessa, and then I had to find a way to understand why she was doing this, and to do it from a place of [sincerity].
“Tessa truly believes she’s doing the right thing for her child. She’s teaching her a very valuable lesson, which is that you only have one mother, and don’t alienate her.”
In the movie, Tessa’s personality comes into sharper focus during the scenes in which she spars with her own icily perfect mother (Cheryl Ladd).
“Tessa doesn’t allow any real emotion to come out even when her mother hurts her feelings or makes her feel small,” says Heigl. “She contains it all. I’ve done that on occasion where I stuff [my feelings] down, and then you have … well, I usually don’t try to kill people, but ... ”
A former child star, Heigl has been working for more than two decades in movies and on TV ever since she co-starred along- side Juliette Lewis in 1992’s “That Night.” Since then, she’s toplined such films as “Knocked Up,” “27 Dresses,” “Killers” and “Jenny’s Wedding,” and appeared on the series “Grey’s Anatomy,” “State of Affairs” and “Doubt.”
Throughout her career, Heigl says she always begins building her characters the same way every time.
“I always approach every character through their wardrobe,” she says. “On this movie, [director] Denise Di Novi and I worked together on that and it sets the tone for me, the perfection [of Tessa’s outfits] and the way she holds herself, and the hair [never being out of place].
“All of that was how I started to dive into Tessa’s personality because there’s something about the way all of that — the clothing, the shoes, the hair, the makeup — changes the way you hold yourself, and changes the way you express yourself.
“I wanted to have moments where we [knew] that she wasn’t just maniacal and she wasn’t just insane. She was heartbroken and insecure and afraid and aging and not knowing how to deal with any of it. But, yeah, it all started with the clothes.”