Topic of discussion

She laughed. It was 9 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning and Heigl was wearing a full-length red Oscar De La Renta dress, black shawl over the shoulders. Her hair was blown out, face fully made up. This week very much promised to be busy -- and all about her. She was getting married in a few days to singer Josh Kelley -- a destination wedding on her property in Utah. She was still deflecting comments she made in the January issue of Vanity Fair. And she had her first big starring role in a movie to promote.

For now, Heigl was sitting under a heat lamp outside at the Four Seasons Hotel, smoking and drinking a pot of coffee with Splenda before heading back upstairs to her "holding suite" before a day's worth of promotion for her new movie, the romantic comedy "27 Dresses."

"I'm not a workaholic," she insisted. "I'm not. I'm the laziest person I know."

It was hard to believe this, coming from someone in De La Renta at 9 in the morning. Still, this self-effacing confession is in keeping with Heigl's growing reputation as being unusually frank, her comments coming in somewhere between Dorothy Parker-tough and diva-spoiled.

"Outspoken," people call her, although it could also just be said that she speaks. Jane Fonda in Vietnam was outspoken; Heigl in Hollywood, calling the character she played in "Knocked Up" a shrew, is merely being forthright.

"The press or the media has decided that I'm outspoken, and I guess that's my angle or something?" she asks. "I have been this way for the last five to seven years when I started saying, 'You know, screw it, I'm not going to pussyfoot around issues anymore.' I kind of say what I think. And if I feel passionately about something I will be honest about it, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that."

Heigl also just might be the next big romantic-comedy heroine, joining the conga line of Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore -- actresses in whom men see a sex object and women see themselves.

"She's beautiful, but not in a cold way," said Elizabeth Gabler, president of Fox 2000, which is releasing "27 Dresses," a film that will test Heigl's box-office draw. "You feel like you could be working with her in the office."