Returning to theaters on Friday in “Life as We Know It,” Ms. Heigl has a chance to rehabilitate herself with an industry that is newly nervous about her drawing power  her last film, “Killers,” flopped badly  and redefine her public persona with the popped-claws celebrity media while winning back any “Grey’s Anatomy” fans who may have wandered. “Life as We Know It,” about two single people who become the parents of a little girl when their mutual best friends die in an accident, offers Ms. Heigl the kind of character that won her a fan base in the first place: big-hearted and goofy yet sympathetic and relatable. It’s a comedy, but she does a lot of crying.

Ms. Heigl unwittingly created her image problem by being honest in interviews. Her comments were not particularly scandalous but spawned tabloid feeding frenzies, because she didn’t just mouth promotional platitudes about her projects. When she told Vanity Fair that her 2007 movie “Knocked Up” was “a little bit sexist”  well, duh  the blowback was swift and severe, culminating with her co-star from that film, Seth Rogen, trashing her on Howard Stern’s radio show. Then Ms. Heigl complained about the quality of writing on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Again, duh: Shonda Rhimes, the creator of that show, had Ms. Heigl’s character, Izzie, performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a deer.

But Ms. Heigl was quickly branded a traitor. In a Hollywood twist, her publicist fired her.

Her Q score, a measurement of a star’s likability, has even decreased. In the summer of 2008, 29 percent of people surveyed viewed her positively, according to Marketing Evaluations Inc. This summer it was down to 20 percent. Ms. Roberts, to compare, has a Q score of 38 percent.

It is difficult but not impossible to escape the kind of pigeonhole in which Ms. Heigl finds herself or, better yet, to shift the focus to the acting. Just ask Robert Downey Jr. But it’s usually harder for women in Hollywood to pull off the feat. (It took a decade for Drew Barrymore to escape her party-girl image. Russell Crowe eventually moved beyond his throwing-the-telephone moment. Angelina Jolie has yet to move past being branded a home wrecker.) Is Ms. Heigl willing to cram herself into a pretty-but-not-heard public persona, which is, after all, what the celebrity media want from blond bombshells like her?

She seemed to be struggling with the answer.

“I’ve been told I’m too forthright with opinions,” Ms. Heigl said with a sigh. “Well do they want a fierce woman or milquetoast? Should I be me, or should I pretend to be something I think people want? Pretending seems pretty ridiculous to me.” She paused to think for a moment before adding, “I didn’t think that what I was was so bad that I needed to hide it.”