And her latest film venture, the family drama Pieces Of April, which opens on Friday February 20, sees her transformed on screen in the role of screwed-up April.

It's only six years since the Ohio-born actress had her big break - winning a role in the acclaimed Ang Lee film The Ice Storm her very first audition. And for five of those years Katie has starred as Joey in the youth orientated drama Dawson Creek.

Since then the softly-spoken actress has done a remarkable series of supporting roles, from Wonder Boys and Phone Booth to the recent Robert Downey Jnr big screen remake of Dennis Potter's classic The Singing Detective.

But with Pieces Of April, Katie gets to play center stage as the black sheep who invites her family to her chic So Ho apartment for a peace-offering Thanksgiving dinner for her father (Oliver Platt) and dying mother, played by Patricia Clarkson, who has won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance.

The film, a small-budget independent production, sees good hearted April make a mess of things.

"It was really different for me, different from what I'm used to seeing myself do," admits Katie, who didn't warm to her character at first.

"She's someone who is so cool it's intimidating."

And the actress didn't take it for granted that she could dress in strange clothes, put on a wig, and have audiences automatically accept her.

"On the outside she seems so angry and defiant but I was interested in seeing somebody like her also be vulnerable. I love it that when you meet April she seems like such a tough chick and by the end she has touched people," she says.

In fact, writer and director Peter Hedges admits, one of the reasons he cast Katie was the appeal of pitting the actress against her public image. "Katie is the daughter of every parents' dreams so I was certainly using the preconceptions a lot of people have," he says.

The key to Katie-as-April is she's still appealing deep down, he says. "You change Katie's look, you alter her and at the core you still have a good girl who is lost, as opposed to a bad girl who is just nasty."

Katie enjoyed the chance to vamp it up East Village-style - a contrast to her own background, a close-knit family of five children from Toledo, Ohio.

"I have interesting friends who live in downtown New York and I've always thought, 'How do you have the courage to wear that?' I wish I was more creative and I've always admired people who can be kind of outcasts," Holmes reveals.

And she admits it was a great change to be involved in the film, which is far from a typical happy family story.

"Actually it has been kind of surreal," she says. "What I love is that this movie and this script don't tell you how you're supposed to feel. It's just sort of about a family going through this."

Her film career shows no sign of slowing down - next she stars in First Daughter, in which Holmes plays the daughter of US President Michael Keaton.

The actress now lives in Los Angeles, and dates actor Chris Klein, best-known for American Pie. And she says being based in North Carolina during the long Dawson's Creek run prepared her for fame.

"I became recognizable at such a young age, I went from graduating high school to having every-body know who I was. I still try to maintain a pretty normal life. I'm very close to my family and I have the same friends I had in high school."

Going into acting was an unusual career choice where she came from, she points out.

"I'm the youngest of five kids and acting was a different path from all my siblings, they were all into athletics. I think my parents thought, 'It'll be different, keeps her busy'.