You gotta hand it to Katherine Heigl. In the last two years, thanks to plum roles in Knocked Up and on Grey's Anatomy, she's gone from the forgotten child star from My Father, The Hero (forgotten by everyone except pervs, that is) to an Emmy winning actress who's bumping her way onto the A-List. But along the way, thanks to a string of questionable PR snafus like publicly lambasting Judd Apatow and emasculating her husband Joshua at every conceivable turn, she's racked up more than her fair share of detractors. But being the determined ball buster that she is, she's not going to let a little thing like criticism get in her way of becoming her generation's Julia Roberts. Today, Variety reports that she is set to star in and co-produce Escape, based on the true story of Carolyn Jessop, whose memoir of escaping her polygamist husband became a best-seller. While it remains to be seen if this role will earn her a nod at the 2010 Oscars (if it walks like Oscar bait and talks like Oscar bait, it probably is), we can confirm that she won't be accepting any awards at this year's Emmys. As Tom O'Neil of the LAT's Gold Derby blog reports:

"I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention," [Katherine Heigl] tells Gold Derby.

"In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials."

Well, isn't that rich? Just one year after her astounding Emmy win, Heigl has basically given the entire staff of Grey's a giant, nicotine-stained middle finger. While we give her publicist kudos for attempting to spin her client's disenchantment with her television career into some sort of pseudo-stand for the integrity of the Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences, we didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. This is a Master And Commander-esque cannonball shot at the writers and show-runners of Grey's for failing to give her enough scenery to chew this season. While we don't watch the show, O'Neil reports that "one of the few dramatic turns she had on the show this past season involved rescuing a deer that had caused a string of car accidents" (which, actually, sounds kind of hilarious). Call us crazy, but if Izzy doesn't pull a Dr. Doug Ross by the middle of next season and skedaddle the fuck out of Seattle Grace Hospital, we'll eat our hat and liveblog it for you all to watch.

[Photo credit: INF]