text: After quitting Hollywood back in 2009 to focus on her family, Katherine Heigl, the rom-com queen, is back and better than ever with a new US TV show, State Of Affairs, and animated movie, The Nut Job. 
   
   
   
   Speaking exclusively to us, Katherine explained the reasons behind her break from the limelight and said she was starting to regret taking so many parts in romantic comedies and needed to reevaluate her career goals. 'This thing that was my best friend for a long time suddenly turned on me,' she said of the notorious Hollywood machine. 'And I didnï¿½t expect it. I was taken by surprise and angry at it for betraying me.' 
   
   
   
   
   
   'I had an amazing time. I love romantic comedies. I was so stoked to be doing them. But maybe I hit it a little too hard. I couldnï¿½t say no. Thereï¿½s nothing wrong with them, but maybe I overloaded my audience. I should have done a superhero movie or a psychological thriller.' 
   
   
   
   
   
   'I stopped challenging myself. It became a bit by rote and, as a creative person, that can wear you down. That was part of why I took that time off, to ask myself, "What do I want? What am I looking for?" and shut down all the noise.' 
   
   
   
   Speaking about her return to LA and her now-steady career/life balance, she said: 'I feel like Iï¿½m finally rolling into the next phase of my adulthood.' 
   
   
   
   'We made a deal [with the producers of State Of Affairs] that we will only do 15 episodes a season, so I can go back to Utah and do all the things that inspire me.' 
   
   
   
   'Thereï¿½s still a part of me thatï¿½s a Hollywood animal as well.' 
   
   
   
   
   
   Also this month we have the ultimate AW14 trend report, a Marie Claire kids special, plus interviews with Miranda Kerr, Taylor Schilling and Kate Upton. 
   
   
   
   Marie Claireï¿½s August 2014 issue is out now. 
   
   
   
   Got a tablet? Take the new look Marie Claire wherever you go, download straight to your iPad & iPhone, Kindle (just search the store for 'marie claire magazine'), Nook or Google Nexus for only ï¿½2.99. 
   
   ||||| Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams arrive on the red carpet of the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, in Los Angeles, 28 January 2007. AFP PHOTO/GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images) | GABRIEL BOUYS via Getty Images 
   
   Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams may have had the ideal romance in "The Notebook," but off-screen, it's a whole different story. 
   
   Director Nick Cassavetes recently revealed to VH1 that, at one point, Gosling wanted McAdams kicked off the film's set and replaced with another actress. 
   
   "Maybe I'm not supposed to tell this story, but they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not," said Cassavetes. "And Ryan came to me, and there's 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, 'Nick, come here.' And he's doing a scene with Rachel and he says, 'Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off-camera with me?' I said, 'What?' He says, 'I can't. I can't do it with her. I'm just not getting anything from this." 
   
   Apparently, the only thing that calmed the feud between the lead actors was more fighting. 
   
   "We went into a room with a producer; they started screaming and yelling at each other. I walked out," Cassavetes recalled. "At that point I was smoking cigarettes. I smoked a cigarette and everybody came out like, 'All right, let's do this.' And it got better after that, you know? They had it out. The rest of the film wasn't smooth sailing, but it was smoother sailing." 
   
   In a 2007 interview with The Observer, Gosling opened up about his rocky relationship with McAdams. 
   
   "We inspired the worst in each other. It was a strange experience, making a love story and not getting along with your co-star in any way," Gosling said. 
   
   Somehow, the tension between the pair led to a real-life romantic relationship. Gosling himself seems confused by how that came to be. 
   
   "I don't know what happened," he told The Observer. "Two years later I saw her in New York and we started getting the idea that maybe we were wrong about each other ..." Gosling trailed off. 
   
   Gosling and McAdams dated on and off until they finally called it quits in 2007. In the couple's volatile fashion, Gosling told GQ in 2007 that the two didn't break up without a fight. 
   
   “The only thing I remember is we both went down swingin’ and we called it a draw," Gosling said. 
   
   Guess love really isn't like the movies.
target: – If you thought Katherine Heigl's career was suffering because she's difficult to work with, well, allow the actress to set the record straight: It was actually doing too many romantic comedies that was the problem. "I had an amazing time. I love romantic comedies," she explains in a new interview with Marie Claire UK. "I was so stoked to be doing them. But maybe I hit it a little too hard. I couldn’t say no. There’s nothing wrong with them, but maybe I overloaded my audience. I should have done a superhero movie or a psychological thriller." That's when things changed for her. "This thing that was my best friend for a long time suddenly turned on me," she says, referring to the biz. "And I didn’t expect it. I was taken by surprise and angry at it for betraying me." But that's not the only reason she took a five-year hiatus from the limelight, she explains: Thanks to the plethora of rom-coms, "I stopped challenging myself. It became a bit by rote and, as a creative person, that can wear you down. That was part of why I took that time off, to ask myself, 'What do I want? What am I looking for?' and shut down all the noise." She's back now, with a new TV show. (Speaking of movie romances, a shocking interview out yesterday revealed that Ryan Gosling wanted Rachel McAdams kicked off The Notebook set.)