Katherine Heigl just issued a very heartfelt public apology

'Thank you for forgiving me. Next time I will be more thoughtful about other people’s feelings and not just my own.'

While Hollywood actress Katherine Heigl tends to stay out of the spotlight, she and her husband became a talking point this week, hitting the headlines after posting some pretty controversial photos to social media.

The photos in question were taken in a cemetery in Buffalo, New York, where Katherine and her husband were visiting the graves of her late brother, who tragically died in a car accident aged 16 in 1986, and her grandparents, Reinhold and Margaretta Engelhardt.

Making light of the sombre situation, Katherine and her husband, Josh Kelley, held an impromptu photoshoot at the cemetery, posing jokily with a selection of gravestones.

'I also managed to get a little gossip with the girls,' read Katherine's joke caption alongside two angel statues, while another photo saw Josh Kelley sitting against a graveyard that bore his name - a tombstone that Katherine joked was his future resting place.

Posting the (now deleted) snaps to her Instagram profile, the 39-year-old noticed immediately that her photos had not gone down well, removing the controversial images and uploading a heartfelt video apology to her profile.

‘I noticed on my Instagram page that the post I posted earlier was getting a lot of reaction, and I realised you guys are right and that was not appropriate,' she explained in her Instagram video. 'It was disrespectful and I've taken it down.'

She continued: 'Somebody commented and said they didn't think it was an appropriate thing to do but that I was probably trying to make a hard moment light-hearted, and that's exactly what I was doing. It’s kind of a heavy thing to go and visit my loved ones' graves, and I decided to try to find some moments of levity and humour and didn’t realise how inappropriate I was being.'

Concluding her apology, she stated: 'I deeply apologise and I thank you guys for understanding that sometimes I don’t think things through clearly enough and I am grateful for your input and for giving me a heads up when I’m maybe going too far. Thank you for forgiving me. Next time I will be more thoughtful about other people’s feelings and not just my own.'

Well we didn't see that coming.