Actor nominated for Tony in ‘Six Days Seven Nights’ dies of car crash injuries
Anne Heche, the Emmy- and Tony-nominated actor 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, died Friday. She was 53.
Her eldest son, Homer Laffoon, confirmed her death in a statement to The Times on Friday.
“My brother Atlas and I lost our Mom. After six days of almost unbelievable emotional swings, I am left with a deep, wordless sadness,” he wrote. “Hopefully my mom is free from pain and beginning to explore what I like to imagine as her eternal freedom.
“Over those six days, thousands of friends, family, and fans made their hearts known to me. I am grateful for their love, as I am for the support of my Dad, Coley, and my stepmom Alexi who continue to be my rock during this time. Rest In Peace Mom, I love you,
Homer.”
Heche was on life support after crashing her car into a Mar Vista home, which then caught on fire. After the Aug. 5 crash, Heche was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital in critical condition. She was declared brain dead Thursday night. As of Friday, Heche was legally dead, but her heart was still beating and her body was kept on life support to preserve viable organs for possible donation.
Rosanna Arquette, Alec Baldwin, James Gunn and James Tupper were among the Hollywood figures mourning Heche on social media Friday.
Throughout her decades-long career, Heche delivered nearly 100 performances on TV, stage “A World of Our Own,” “Someday, One Day,” “Morningtown Ride,” and “The Carnival Is Over,” which topped the pop charts in Britain and Australia and was based on a 19thcentury Russian folk tune. When the Seekers returned to Australia in 1967, their performance at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne drew 200,000 people, setting a new attendance record for a concert in the Southern Hemisphere.
Judith Mavis Cock was born in Essendon, a Melbourne suburb, on July 3, 1943. Her father was a military aviator during World War II who later worked as a sales manager for an electrical company. Her mother struggled with asthma – Durham was also sickly as a child, diagnosed with the lung condition bronchiectasis – but often joined in family gatherings around the piano, where Durham and her older sister sang Bing Crosby songs and other pop standards.
Durham started taking piano lessons at age 6 and later studied at Ruyton, a girls’ day school near Melbourne. She was working at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency when she met Athol Guy, an account executive who played the double bass and invited her to sit in with the Seekers. The group also included his former high school classmates Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley, who both sang and played guitar. By then, Durham had started performing using her mother’s maiden name.
In 1969, she married Ron Edgeworth, a British pianist and and film. In the late 1980s, she got her big break with a dual role on the long-running NBC soap opera “Another World.” By 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 high-profile 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 when that was much less accepted.
In a 1998 interview with the Los Angeles Times, 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.
On Friday, DeGeneres expressed support for her former partner.
“This is a sad day,” DeGeneres tweeted. “I’m sending Anne’s children, family and friends all of my love.” musical director. They performed together in small theaters and cabarets before settling in Queensland, in northeastern Australia. In 1990, they were in a car that collided with another vehicle near Melbourne. The driver of the other car was killed, and Durham was hospitalized for months with leg, arm and collarbone fractures.
Durham said the car crash spurred a reckoning with her own mortality, and inspired her to reunite with her old bandmates in the Seekers, who had previously performed in her absence with singers including Julie Anthony and Karen Knowles.
While they were preparing for an Australian concert tour, her husband was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, a degenerative disorder. He died in 1994.
Durham continued to perform with the Seekers over the next two decades, touring Australia and Europe. She and her bandmates were appointed Officers of the Order of Australia in 2014, the year after she suffered a stroke that affected her ability to read and write but not to sing. She felt a sense of responsibility, she said, “to give people joy” through music.
“As time has gone on, the music seemed to be very valuable,” she told the Age in 1997, looking back on her earlier hits with the Seekers. “Today’s music seems to lead to a lot of depression . . . . There is something about the harmonies of the Seekers. It seems to be infectious.”