Groundbreaking romance flanked by notable performances
LOS ANGELES: Anne Heche was an Emmy and Tonynominated actress whose work in Six Days Seven Nights, Another World and dozens of other projects dovetailed with a groundbreaking romance with Ellen DeGeneres that challenged homophobia in Hollywood.
Heche was removed from life support after being hospitalised after crashing her car into a Mar Vista home, which then caught on fire. After the August 5 crash, Heche was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital in critical condition. She was declared brain dead last Friday. The next day Heche was legally dead, but her heart was still beating and her body was on life support to preserve viable organs for possible donation. She was 53.
Throughout her decades long career, Heche delivered nearly 100 performances on TV, stage and film. In the late 1980s, she got her big break with a dual role on the longrunning NBC soap opera Another World. In 1991, she won a Daytime Emmy for her acclaimed work as Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on the show.
After rising to prominence on the daytime TV circuit, Heche made the leap to the big screen, where she starred in highprofile films including Donnie Brasco (1997), Volcano (1997), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Six Days Seven Nights (1998), Return to Paradise (1998) and John Q (2002).
Her professional life took a turn, however, when she began publicly dating DeGeneres, who had just come out as gay on her hit sitcom and in real life. Both performers endured major career setbacks as a result of being open about their sexuality at a time when that was much less accepted.
In a 1998 interview with the
Heche accused Fox of refusing to hire her after she and DeGeneres made their relationship official around the time the studio’s Volcano debuted — and tanked — at the box office.
‘‘They still have this bitterness about the timing of my falling in love with Ellen and the opening of Volcano,’’ Heche told the Times.
‘‘I have my own opinions about why that movie didn’t do well, as anybody with half a brain would, but they want to blame it on somebody. I won’t say doors are shut for me. I know there are studios that will hire me (laughing).’’
Heche was born May 25, 1969, in Aurora, Ohio. During her childhood, Heche and her family moved often when her father, a choir director, pursued different gigs. At 12 years old, she worked with a her mother at a dinner theatre in Swainton, New Jersey, then eventually moved with her family to Chicago.
In the Windy City came her big break. A talent scout invited a 16yearold Heche to audition for CBS’s As the World Turns. However, before she could take on that daytime drama, her mother insisted that she finish her high school education. After graduating in 1987, Heche debuted as Vicky Hudson and Marley Love in NBC’s Another World.
‘‘I think everything in my childhood led me to being an actress,’’ she told Larry King in 2001. ‘‘I not only wanted to leave the planet, I wanted to be anything other than who I was. And so did my family.’’
In 1991, Heche earned her first Daytime Emmy for her work in the NBC soap and soon made her film debut. Throughout the ’90s, she appeared in An Ambush of Ghosts, The Adventures of Huck Finn, I’ll Do Anything and others. She eventually became a screen staple, acting alongside Cher, Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin. In 1996, she appeared in Nicole Holofcener’s Sundance film Walking and Talking, then in Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco with Johnny Depp a year later. She also shared the screen with Tommy Lee Jones in Volcano.
Heche met DeGeneres in March 1997 at the Vanity Fair Oscar party. The two went public with their relationship on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, shortly after Heche joined the cast for Six Days Seven Nights.
‘‘I don’t think it was immediately a sexual attraction,’’ Heche told Winfrey about meeting DeGeneres. ‘‘I just think it was, ‘Wow, you are just the most incredible person I’ve ever met and I want to be with you.’’
The women ended their relationship in August 2000. A day after the breakup, Heche made headlines when she dropped by a stranger’s home in Fresno and claimed that God ‘‘was going to take everyone back to heaven in a spaceship’’.
In 2001, Heche released her memoir, Call Me Crazy. In it, she alleged that her father, who was gay and died of Aids in 1983, abused her when she was young. She previously told the that she intended for her autobiography to help others.
‘‘It’s who I am. I hope the fact that I talk about these things in my life might help other people find peace in their own conflicts,’’ she told the in 2004. ‘‘People are curious about it, but I think it will become less and less, and hopefully I’ll have more and more topics to add on so that there won’t always be questions about the last seven years of my life.’’
In September 2001, Heche married Coleman Laffoon, a cameraman whom she had hired in 2000 to film a documentary about DeGeneres. The next year was a busy one as Heche gave birth to their son, Homer, and made her Broadway debut in a production of Proof.
In 2004, she earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her work in Gracie’s Choice and a Tony nomination for her work in a Broadway production of the play Twentieth Century, where she starred opposite Baldwin.
In 2007, Heche filed for divorce from Laffoon and began dating her Men in Trees costar James Tupper. In December 2008, she gave birth to her second child, Atlas. From 2009 to 2011, Heche starred in HBO’s
Hung. She also had a recurring arc as Susan RodriguezJones in
The Michael J. Fox Show from 2013 to 2014.
Heche revisited Broadway in 2016 with Topher Grace in
Opening Night. She also starred with Sandra Oh in the indie film
Catfight.
In 2017, Heche appeared in the film My Friend Dahmer and took up a lead role for the NBC series The Brave. In 2018, she and Tupper split.
In recent years Heche continued to keep busy, launching the Better Together with Anne & Heater podcast with cohost Heather Duff in 2020. In June 2022, she also landed a starring role in Lifetime’s upcoming film Girl in Room 13, directed by Elisabeth Rohm. The film was still on track for its September release.
Heche is survived by her sons Homer and Atlas.
Angeles Times