Katherine Heigl quick with a smoke and an opinion

LOS ANGELES — She enters the room in a knit that fits, the kind of dress with a place for everything. Lipstick the color of a valentine. The doors to the balcony are thrown open and she exhales, "Great, I can smoke," and pulls one from the pack and you think, carbon monoxide might not be so bad. She was raised Mormon, but she's drinking coffee by the gallon, and for the next hour Katherine Heigl is happy to ride the buzz and talk about raunchy jokes, humorless shrews and God's infinite mysteries.

Heigl, 29, might be the new It Girl. She was just on the cover of Vanity Fair, where she continues to scandalize the town by having opinions. She stars in "27 Dresses," opening nationwide Friday, about a plainish Jane who is forever the bridesmaid, never the bride. It's Heigl's first traditional romantic comedy, if you don't count "Knocked Up" as a traditional romantic comedy because it is filthy (it also did $148 million in domestic box office). Heigl is also Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens on the top-rated "Grey's Anatomy," a role that won Heigl an Emmy.

She's striking a lighter. "It's so stupid. I started when I was like 22 or 23, and I had my first cigarette at a bar one night, and I was like mmm." She makes a nice mmm face. "I'll try this. I can have just one. I am not gonna get addicted. Then you start bumming. I'm bumming. I don't buy my own packs. I'm not addicted.

"Then you go through something that is hard or difficult or stressful and you buy your first pack and it's all over," Heigl says. Kids — please, pay attention. "And now it's all about how you're going to quit," she says. "I've tried everything."

She issues a throaty, delicious, precancerous laugh.

She mentions that her good friend T.R. Knight, who plays fellow intern George on "Grey's Anatomy," quit smoking recently. How proud she is.

The slur incident

Knight, you may recall, was reportedly subjected to a homosexual slur by fellow thespian Isaiah Washington in an on-set altercation (hissy fit) with co-star Patrick Dempsey. Washington denied uttering the slur, but while denying it (in front of reporters at last year's Golden Globes), he used the word again (a classic).

At the time, an exasperated Heigl told "Access Hollywood" that Washington "needs to just not speak in public." In Entertainment Weekly, she called him "thoughtless and boneheaded." Washington was relieved of his duties. And suddenly, Heigl became known as a gal with opinions.

Heigl has been in the business a long time. A child model, then child actor, then teen actor. She starred in "Bride of Chucky" and "Under Siege 2: Dark Territory." She did a lot of mediocre TV movies.

After graduating from a Connecticut high school, Heigl and her mom drove west. "We put all our [stuff] in the car, and the dog, and us, and I had really high hopes." She laughs. "And it was nothing like what I thought it would be. Nope. L.A. is a totally different universe. It's a beast."

Hollywood has a kind of default setting when confronted with an actress such as Heigl, she says. "You're the blond," she says. "Or the cheerleader. Or the girlfriend. It would have been really easy to fall back on the blond and the bra size and just do that for the rest of my career."

Her mother, Nancy Heigl, is also her business partner and manager. "I've always respected my mother, her intellect, her savvy, her courage. I haven't met that many people like my mother."

The key to their success? "There was never a time in her life when my mother ever wanted this — this profession — for herself. So there's no agenda. There's no living vicariously through me," she says. "Here's someone who's not going to sell me down the river."

When "Knocked Up" was released, Heigl suggested that her character, Alison Scott, was the stiff, tense, overachieving shrew to Seth Rogen's fun-loving boy-man. Heigl suggested it was, you know, a little sexist, maybe, that the guys get all the jokes, and the gals are always the buzz kill.

She remembers on the set of the film there "were a lot of moments where I screwed up takes because I was laughing so much. Their humor, however raunchy and base it is, really, I love that humor. But I couldn't play the girl who thought they were funny. I had to play the girl who was telling them to grow up!"

The nag. "Uggg," she says. "I hate the nag. Most of my friends are funny, witty, intelligent and beautiful women, so it's not that unusual, a pretty girl being funny, is it? But for some reason in this town, they really like to compartmentalize, so you're either the character actor who is funny or you're the pretty girl in the movie."

We wonder whether they also treat Heigl like a Mormon. Apparently not. "If I were a still super-practicing strict Mormon, then people would be a little more cautious around me, but unfortunately I'm fairly vulgar, and I smoke and I drink coffee and I drink alcohol and I love to talk about religion."

Heigl's family converted to Mormonism when she was 7, after her brother was killed while riding in the back of a pickup truck. "It's one of those religions that don't really fit into Hollywood," she says. "But it did a lot to save our family."

How so? "What appeals to me is that love goes on and continues. It doesn't mean that after death it's the end of this person you loved and cherish. Because then you're living in a world of what the hell is the point? ... I've always thought that there is a beautiful balance within the Mormon religion, where they believe in some very solid answers, but there is also a lot left unknown. There aren't answers in this lifetime. ... I talk to God all the time. He doesn't really talk back all that much. But every once in a while I get an inkling of something. Atheists or agnostics can tell me I'm crazy and it's just my safety blanket. ... Why not? Why should I live my life afraid and alone if I found something that comforts me?"

Finally on topic

Heigl turns to her assigned subject: weddings. Which reminds her of when she lost a role in "Wedding Crashers" and thought her career had stalled. "I was just about to call it quits," she says. Instead she got hired for "Grey's Anatomy."

Oh, and she's also getting married herself, to singer-songwriter Josh Kelley. (They wed on Dec. 23.)

Now she's talking about her new comedy, "27 Dresses," and mulls the question of why her character, Jane, is such a doormat.

"Jane wants to be the victim. It's much safer for her to be put upon than to actually go after what she wants and fail," she says. Then she quotes Dr. Phil in saying that "you teach people how to treat you."

Jane does everything for everyone else. "I almost felt like Jane was the villain," Heigl says, and that is an interesting idea. "It was important to me for her not to be too much of the victim. This girl had some edge. She had some reasons."

Heigl waves her arm in the air. "But it's a romantic comedy. It's a real chick flick. It's the kind of movie I love and try to go see every chance I can get. But you know," she says, and you've got to like this part, "there's not a ton of profoundness about it."