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Katherine Heigl: Why She Left Grey’s Anatomy

In 2007, Katherine Heigl married the love of her life in a wedding fit for a princess in the mountains of Utah. “It was Narnia, a winter wonderland. It was magic,” Heigl told the September issue o...
Katherine Heigl: Why She Left Grey’s Anatomy
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  • In 2007, Katherine Heigl married the love of her life in a wedding fit for a princess in the mountains of Utah.

    “It was Narnia, a winter wonderland. It was magic,” Heigl told the September issue of Good Housekeeping of the day she married her husband Josh Kelley.

    Not long after, in 2009, Heigl and Kelley adopted their first child Naleigh. In that same year, Katherine Heigl was one of the most-wanted actresses in Hollywood. She could have worked on basically any project she wanted, but all she really wanted to do was stay at home with her young daughter.

    “I would come home angry and frustrated that I’d missed everything with my kid that day,” Heigl said. “I didn’t get to wake her up from her nap, or do bath time or bedtime. I’d have to sneak into her room and kiss her when she was sleeping, hoping not to wake her up.”

    Her role as Izzy on Grey’s Anatomy was controlling most of her life and taking up the majority of her time. It was then that Katherine knew she had to make a change in her life. “I felt like my priorities were messed up,” she added. “I was putting so much time and energy into just my work, but I was raised [to believe] that family comes first.”

    Heigl first took a few months off from Grey’s Anatomy, but later decided to end her time on the show completely because she was enjoying spending her time with her family. Heigl and Kelley wanted to adopt another child and live a quieter life, and she knew she couldn’t do that while working on ABC’s hit show.

    “We had big dreams of expanding our family, moving to the mountains and having a quieter life,” Heigl said. That is exactly what they did. In 2012, Heigl and Kelley adopted their second child, a daughter Adalaide. “Naleigh would go off to her ballet classes and other stuff, and I would sit with the baby at home. I would read, and she would lie on my chest, and we’d lie on the couch with, like, four dogs, and watch ‘Friday Night Lights,'” she said. “I found it so peaceful.”

    Now, five years later, Heigl has returned to television with a role on State of Affairs; her first big television appearance since Grey’s Anatomy.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

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