Report: Anne Heche in hospital, stable after fiery auto accident

LOS ANGELES — Anne Heche was in the hospital Saturday following an accident in which her car smashed into a house and flames erupted, a representative for the actor told People magazine.

The representative, who was not identified, told the magazine that Heche was in stable condition a day after Friday’s accident. Her family and friends were asking that her privacy be respected, People reported.

Her speeding car came to a T-shaped intersection and ran off the road and into the house in the Mar Vista section of Los Angeles’ westside shortly before 11 a.m. Friday, Los Angeles police Officer Tony Im said.

The car came to rest inside the two-story house and started a fire that took nearly 60 firefighters more than an hour to put out, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Officials haven’t identified Heche as the driver who was pulled from the car as it was inside the house, but said it was registered to her.

Television news video showed a blue Mini Cooper Clubman, badly damaged and burned, being towed out of the home, with a blonde woman sitting up on a stretcher and struggling as firefighters put her in an ambulance.

No other injuries were reported, and no arrests have been made. Police detectives are investigating.

Her representatives did not immediately respond Saturday to requests for comment.

A native of Ohio, Heche first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera “Another World” from 1987 to 1991. She won a Daytime Emmy Award for the role.

In the late 1990s she became one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, a constant on magazine covers and in big-budget films. She co-starred with Johnny Depp in 1997’s “Donnie Brasco”; with Tommy Lee Jones in 1997’s “Volcano”; with Harrison Ford in 1998’s “Six Days, Seven Nights”; with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix in 1998’s “Return to Paradise,” and with an ensemble cast in the original 1997 “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

Her relationship with Ellen Degeneres from 1997 to 2000 heightened her fame and brought immense public scrutiny.

In the fall of 2000 soon after the two broke up, Heche was hospitalized after knocking on the door of a stranger in a rural area near Fresno, California. Authorities said she had appeared shaken and disoriented, and spoke incoherently to the residents.