Forging any acting career is a feat, so hats off to her. Yet no one ever enters acting looking to be a genre queen. I would love to see her in a small role in a big movie (kinda like Casey Wilson in Gone Girl) and see if she has the chops. Or comedy. I can see her doing well in a Leslie Mann, Rose Byrne kind of comedy role.
shareYou're absolutely right, but the problem is typecasting. If you have a success in genre films, especially science fiction or fantasy you get offered genre scripts from then on, and the producers of serious films only consider a tiny A-list pool, like Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock currently. I can't imagine a prestige project (say either of Reese's current movies) being offered to Katee even though she is the right age. Remember that in the early '80s when Kirstie Alley controversially turned down the opportunity to reprise her Vulcan role after STAR TREK 2 she proved to be right -instead of being typecast at the very beginning of her career she launched a fabulously successful comedy run.
This is true with directors too - I liked when John Carpenter used to step out of his comfort zone (take STARMAN for example, sci fi but mainstream cinema), but latterly he was dragged back to hardcore genre material time and again. It's the Hollywood way -even worse for porn stars who want to go mainstream. Imagine Traci Lords, Ginger Lynn or even the less talented Jenna Jameson getting a real role and not just some stupid John Waters level assignment.