Before Anne Heche died, the 53-year-old actress was ready to tell the world the whole story of the Hollywood hate she endured during her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres in the late 1990s.
Heche, who passed away in Los Angeles on Aug. 11 following a tragic car crash, detailed the discriminatory backlash she faced as half of Tinseltown’s first publicly gay couple in her forthcoming memoir “Call Me Anne,” the Associated Press reported.
In the book, to be released in January by independent publisher Start, Heche grapples with the uncertainty of how to label her sexuality at the time, when she felt she didn’t identify as a lesbian or a straight woman.
“I was labeled ‘outrageous’ because I fell in love with a woman. I had never been with a woman before I dated Ellen,” Heche wrote in the memoir.
The “Donnie Brasco” actress wrote about being blacklisted because of her relationship with DeGeneres, who went on to make history as the first gay sitcom host.
Heche wrote about being called “outrageous” for being in an openly gay relationship with DeGeneres in the late ’90s in her new memoir “Call Me Anne.” REUTERS
Heche describes feeling like she was being shamed by the world.
“I did not, personally, identify as a lesbian. I simply fell in love! It was, to be clear, as odd to me as anyone else. There were no words to describe how I felt,” Heche wrote, describing how she didn’t know how to label her sexuality at the time, and didn’t think it was fair for the world to either.
“Gay didn’t feel right, and neither did straight. Alien might be the best fit, I sometimes thought. What, why, and how I fell in love with a person instead of their gender, I would have loved to have answered if anyone had asked, but as I said earlier, no one ever did. I am happy that I was able to tell you in this book — once and for all,” the former actress wrote in the forthcoming book.
Before her death, Heche had offered up hints about her latest project on a podcast, dishing that “some of the truths” about her relationship with DeGeneres would be mentioned.
“Gay didn’t feel right, and neither did straight. Alien might be the best fit, I sometimes thought. What, why, and how I fell in love with a person instead of their gender, I would have loved to have answered if anyone had asked, but as I said earlier, no one ever did,” Heche wrote in her forthcoming memoir, “Call Me Anne.” FilmMagic
“Call Me Anne” follows Heche’s 2001 memoir “Call Me Crazy,” which sparked renewed interest after her death as a “collectible” on Amazon with a price tag of nearly $750.
Heche’s book also details her experience with having Harrison Ford as a mentor and shares stories about Alec Baldwin, Oliver Stone and Ivan Reitman, including others.
In the wake of her passing, law enforcement sources told TMZ that Heche was under the influence of cocaine when she slammed her car into a home that set a fire and left her in a coma. She leaves behind two sons.
Stars mourned the late mother of two, including ex-girlfriend DeGeneres taking to social media to express her emotional condolences.
“This is a sad day,” she wrote. “I’m sending Anne’s children, family and friends all my love,” she wrote on Twitter.
2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards – Credit: FilmMagic
A battle is brewing over the estate of Anne Heche, the Six Days, Seven Nights actress who died from inhalation and thermal injuries suffered in a fiery car crash last month.
Heche’s ex-boyfriend James Tupper, the father of her 13-year-old son Atlas Heche Tupper, filed a probate petition Thursday objecting to her 20-year-old soon Homer Heche Laffoon’s Aug. 31 bid to be named executor of her estate.
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Tupper, who was with Heche from 2007 to 2018, says the actress “wrote and sent her will via email” to him and two other people on January 25, 2011. He says Heche specifically nominated him to handle her affairs.
“My wishes are that all of my assets go to the control of Mr. James Tupper to be used to raise my children and then given to the children,” Heche allegedly wrote.
Tupper, 57, says the court should honor Heche’s final wishes and deny Laffoon’s petition, which inaccurately said she died intestate. He questioned both Laffoon’s ability to carry out the task and his motives.
“Homer is not suitable for appointment as personal representative of this estate. He is only 20 years of age and is unemployed, and was estranged from [Heche] at the time of her death due to his dropping out of university studies and not working to support himself,” Tupper’s petition filed by his lawyer Christopher B. Johnson states.
“The administrator role requires someone with more experience and sophistication, as the estate assets require management and collection by someone with the required expertise. Homer’s lack of assets and income also means he will be unable to obtain a bond, and in fact his petition asks that no bond be posted, which is unacceptable to [Tupper],” the filing says.
According to Tupper, Laffoon failed to show up for a grief counseling session with his younger brother after their mom’s death and also skipped a planned dinner with Atlas and Tupper on Aug. 25, leaving the pair waiting 90 minutes for him at a restaurant.
“This is particularly upsetting given that Atlas is 13 years old, was with his mother on the day of her death, and he has reached out to Homer repeatedly. In fact, since their mother’s death, Homer has not seen his brother, nor had contact with him. It concerns objector that in light of this behavior, Homer will not act in his brother’s best interest,” Tupper’s petition says.
“Objector Tupper helped raise these boys from a very early age, and cares deeply for their well-being. It is his desire that they achieve a fair and good result from these proceedings, which is his sole purpose in filing these objections,” the filing states.
The petition says Tupper’s first choice is to hire a private professional fiduciary to manage the estate, but he also would helm it himself. Either way, he said there’s no “urgent need” to appoint a special administrator on an emergency basis.
He said the release of Heche’s upcoming memoir Call Me Anne wasn’t a basis to rush anything because it’s not dropping until January 24, 2023. The book, a sequel to her 2001 memoir Call Me Crazy, is due from New Jersey-based publisher Start. In an excerpt shared with the Associated Press, Heche described her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres.
“I did not, personally, identify as a lesbian. I simply fell in love! It was, to be clear, as odd to me as anyone else. There were no words to describe how I felt,” Heche wrote. “Gay didn’t feel right, and neither did straight. Alien might be the best fit, I sometimes thought. What, why, and how I fell in love with a person instead of their gender, I would have loved to have answered if anyone had asked, but as I said earlier, no one ever did. I am happy that I was able to tell you in this book — once and for all.”
Once an estate administrator is named, that person will have the authority to collect, inventory, appraise and manage Heche’s assets after her untimely death in the aftermath of the horrific crash.
Laffoon’s filing, obtained by Rolling Stone, says the value of his mom’s estate remains “unknown.” His lawyer, Bryan L. Phipps, said in a statement that Laffoon was in the process of having a third party appointed as a guardian ad litem for his younger brother.
A hearing in the probate case is set for Oct. 11.
Heche, 53, was declared brain dead last month but remained on life support for several days in order to donate her organs, her family said at the time.
“Anne had a huge heart and touched everyone she met with her generous spirit. More than her extraordinary talent, she saw spreading kindness and joy as her life’s work – especially moving the needle for acceptance of who you love,” a statement from her family sent to Rolling Stone said. “She will be remembered for her courageous honesty and dearly missed for her light.”
A week before her death, Heche, 53, drove her car at a high speed into a one-story residence in Los Angeles’ Mar Vista neighborhood.
“The car did leave the roadway at the T intersection and went up over the curb. It was airborne before it went into the house and was approximately 30 feet inside the small home when it came to a rest,” Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey previously told Rolling Stone.
Heche was rushed from the scene of the wild crash in critical condition. “The home was well-involved in fire,” Humphrey said. “One woman who was home was at the back of the home and thankfully and miraculously escaped injury.”
Los Angeles Police Officer Matthew Cruz later confirmed to Rolling Stone that detectives were able to test some of Heche’s blood via a search warrant. “The result does show narcotics,” he said. “We still need additional testing to tell if anything administered at the hospital is showing up in her system.”
A final autopsy report is still pending the results of toxicology testing that could take weeks, officials said.
A battle is brewing over the estate of Anne Heche, the Six Days, Seven Nights actress who died from inhalation and thermal injuries suffered in a fiery car crash last month.
Heche’s ex-boyfriend James Tupper, the father of her 13-year-old son Atlas Heche Tupper, filed a probate petition Thursday objecting to her 20-year-old soon Homer Heche Laffoon’s Aug. 31 bid to be named executor of her estate.
Tupper, who was with Heche from 2007 to 2018, says the actress “wrote and sent her will via email” to him and two other people on January 25, 2011. He says Heche specifically nominated him to handle her affairs.
“My wishes are that all of my assets go to the control of Mr. James Tupper to be used to raise my children and then given to the children,” Heche allegedly wrote.
Tupper, 57, says the court should honor Heche’s final wishes and deny Laffoon’s petition, which inaccurately said she died intestate. He questioned both Laffoon’s ability to carry out the task and his motives.
“Homer is not suitable for appointment as personal representative of this estate. He is only 20 years of age and is unemployed, and was estranged from [Heche] at the time of her death due to his dropping out of university studies and not working to support himself,” Tupper’s petition filed by his lawyer Christopher B. Johnson states.
“The administrator role requires someone with more experience and sophistication, as the estate assets require management and collection by someone with the required expertise. Homer’s lack of assets and income also means he will be unable to obtain a bond, and in fact his petition asks that no bond be posted, which is unacceptable to [Tupper],” the filing says.
According to Tupper, Laffoon failed to show up for a grief counseling session with his younger brother after their mom’s death and also skipped a planned dinner with Atlas and Tupper on Aug. 25, leaving the pair waiting 90 minutes for him at a restaurant.
“This is particularly upsetting given that Atlas is 13 years old, was with his mother on the day of her death, and he has reached out to Homer repeatedly. In fact, since their mother’s death, Homer has not seen his brother, nor had contact with him. It concerns objector that in light of this behavior, Homer will not act in his brother’s best interest,” Tupper’s petition says.
“Objector Tupper helped raise these boys from a very early age, and cares deeply for their well-being. It is his desire that they achieve a fair and good result from these proceedings, which is his sole purpose in filing these objections,” the filing states.
The petition says Tupper’s first choice is to hire a private professional fiduciary to manage the estate, but he also would helm it himself. Either way, he said there’s no “urgent need” to appoint a special administrator on an emergency basis.
He said the release of Heche’s upcoming memoir Call Me Anne wasn’t a basis to rush anything because it’s not dropping until January 24, 2023. The book, a sequel to her 2001 memoir Call Me Crazy, is due from New Jersey-based publisher Start. In an excerpt shared with the Associated Press, Heche described her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres.
“I did not, personally, identify as a lesbian. I simply fell in love! It was, to be clear, as odd to me as anyone else. There were no words to describe how I felt,” Heche wrote. “Gay didn’t feel right, and neither did straight. Alien might be the best fit, I sometimes thought. What, why, and how I fell in love with a person instead of their gender, I would have loved to have answered if anyone had asked, but as I said earlier, no one ever did. I am happy that I was able to tell you in this book — once and for all.”
Once an estate administrator is named, that person will have the authority to collect, inventory, appraise and manage Heche’s assets after her untimely death in the aftermath of the horrific crash.
Laffoon’s filing, obtained by Rolling Stone, says the value of his mom’s estate remains “unknown.” His lawyer, Bryan L. Phipps, said in a statement that Laffoon was in the process of having a third party appointed as a guardian ad litem for his younger brother.
A hearing in the probate case is set for Oct. 11.
Heche, 53, was declared brain dead last month but remained on life support for several days in order to donate her organs, her family said at the time.
“Anne had a huge heart and touched everyone she met with her generous spirit. More than her extraordinary talent, she saw spreading kindness and joy as her life’s work – especially moving the needle for acceptance of who you love,” a statement from her family sent to Rolling Stone said. “She will be remembered for her courageous honesty and dearly missed for her light.”
A week before her death, Heche, 53, drove her car at a high speed into a one-story residence in Los Angeles’ Mar Vista neighborhood.
“The car did leave the roadway at the T intersection and went up over the curb. It was airborne before it went into the house and was approximately 30 feet inside the small home when it came to a rest,” Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey previously told Rolling Stone.
Heche was rushed from the scene of the wild crash in critical condition. “The home was well-involved in fire,” Humphrey said. “One woman who was home was at the back of the home and thankfully and miraculously escaped injury.”
Los Angeles Police Officer Matthew Cruz later confirmed to Rolling Stone that detectives were able to test some of Heche’s blood via a search warrant. “The result does show narcotics,” he said. “We still need additional testing to tell if anything administered at the hospital is showing up in her system.”
A final autopsy report is still pending the results of toxicology testing that could take weeks, officials said.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor Anne Heche died without a will, and her 20-year-old son has filed court papers to control her estate.
Homer Laffoon, Heche’s son with ex-husband Coleman Laffoon, filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday requesting that he be allowed to administer his mother’s estate.
The petition lists Homer Laffoon and 13-year-old Atlas Tupper, Heche’s son with former partner James Tupper, as her only heirs.
The document says the value of Heche’s estate is unknown. That is often the case on such initial filings, before anyone has the legal authority to assess the dead person’s assets.
Homer Laffoon also filed a petition asking that someone be appointed to represent his brother’s interests in court.
A representative of Heche declined comment on the filing.
On Aug. 5, a car Heche was driving jumped a curb, smashed into a Los Angeles home and burst into flames. She was declared brain dead on Aug. 11, and was kept alive on life support for three more days so her organs could be donated.
Heche, 53, was among the biggest film stars of the late 1990s, starring opposite actors including Johnny Depp and Harrison Ford, and had worked consistently in movies and television for more than three decades.
She was married to Coleman Laffoon, a television camera operator, from 2001 to 2009, and was in a relationship with James Tupper, an actor, from 2007 to 2018. She had a son with each.
Anne Heche died from inhalation injury and burns after her fiery car crash and the death was ruled an accident, according to coroner’s results released on Wednesday.
Heche, 53, also had a fractured sternum caused by “blunt trauma”, according to information on the website of the Los Angeles county medical examiner.
A full autopsy report was still being completed, the coroner’s office said.
The actor was removed from life support Sunday at a burn center. She was injured when her car jumped a curb and smashed into a west Los Angeles home on 5 August. The car and the home burst into flames. Only Heche was injured.
Heche suffered a “severe anoxic brain injury” caused by a lack of oxygen, according to a statement released last week on behalf of her family and friends.
She was declared brain-dead but was kept on life support until her organs could be donated.
Detectives looking into the crash had said narcotics were found in a blood sample taken from Heche. However, police ended their investigation after she was declared brain-dead.
The coroner’s office listed 11 August as her date of death.
Heche first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera Another World in the late 1980s before becoming one of the hottest stars in Hollywood in the late 1990s. She was a constant on magazine covers and in big-budget films opposite actors including Johnny Depp and Harrison Ford.
Anne Heche, an actress who was as well known for her roles in films like “Six Days, Seven Nights” and “Donnie Brasco” as for her personal life, which included a three-year romance with the comedian Ellen DeGeneres, died on Sunday in Los Angeles, nine days after she was in a devastating car accident there. She was 53.
Her death was announced late Sunday by a representative, Holly Baird, who said in an email that Ms. Heche had been “peacefully taken off life support.”
Ms. Heche was critically injured on Aug. 5 when a Mini Cooper she was driving crashed into a two-story home in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, causing a fire that took firefighters more than an hour to extinguish. Ms. Heche, who was alone in the car, sustained burns and a severe anoxic brain injury, caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain.
A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police said the department was continuing to investigate whether drug use contributed to the accident.
A statement released by her publicist on behalf of her family on Thursday night said Ms. Heche had remained in a coma at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles.
“It has long been her choice to donate her organs, and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable,” the statement said.
On Friday, a representative said Ms. Heche had been declared brain-dead on Thursday night.
Ms. Heche was a soap opera star before she became known to movie audiences. In the late 1980s, soon after she graduated from high school, she joined the cast of the daytime drama “Another World,” where she played the good and evil twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love. She won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991 for outstanding younger actress in a drama series.
By the mid-1990s, she was a rising star in Hollywood. She played Catherine Keener’s best friend in “Walking and Talking” (1996); Johnny Depp’s wife in “Donnie Brasco” (1997); a presidential aide in the political satire “Wag the Dog” (1997), with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro; and a fashion magazine editor who crash-lands on a South Seas island in an airplane piloted by Harrison Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights” (1998).
“Romantic comedies don’t get more formulaic than this bouncing-screwball valentine, but they don’t get much more delightful, either,” Rita Kempley wrote in her review of “Six Days, Seven Nights” in The Washington Post. “The same goes for Heche and Ford as squabbling opposites drawn together during this tropical adventure.”
Ms. Heche began a relationship with Ms. DeGeneres in 1997, at a time when same-sex relationships in Hollywood were not fully accepted. The relationship became widely known in April of that year when they appeared, hand in hand, at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. A few days later, Ms. DeGeneres’s character on her sitcom, “Ellen,” came out as gay.
Ms. Heche’s decision to reveal that she was in a lesbian relationship, The New York Times wrote, “confronted Hollywood with a highly delicate problem: how to deal with a gay actress whose career has been built on playing heterosexual roles.”
Remembering Anne Heche (1969-2022)
The actress, who appeared in several popular Hollywood films and TV shows, died on Aug. 14, after being critically injured in a car accident.
After that relationship ended, Ms. Heche married and later divorced a man, Coleman Laffoon, with whom she had a son, Homer. She also had a son, Atlas Heche Tupper, from her relationship with the actor James Tupper.
She is survived by her sons as well as her mother, Nancy Hache, and her sister Abigail Heche. Her sister Susan Bergman died in 2006; another sister, Cynthia, died as an infant; and her brother, Nathan, died in 1983.
Ms. Heche told The New York Post in 2021 that she had been “blacklisted” in Hollywood because of her relationship with Ms. DeGeneres.
“I didn’t do a studio picture for 10 years,” she was quoted as saying. “I was fired from a $10 million picture deal and did not see the light of day in a studio picture.”
After she starred in “Six Days, Seven Nights” and in Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” as Marion Crane, the role originally played by Janet Leigh, leading roles in movies largely gave way to guest appearances on television shows like “Ally McBeal” and “Nip/Tuck.”
She also starred in the short-lived sitcom “Men in Trees,” had recurring roles on “Everwood” and “Chicago P.D.” and landed a featured part on the HBO series “Hung,” which starred Thomas Jane as a male prostitute.
She appeared on Broadway in the play “Proof” from 2002 until it closed in 2003, then in the 2004 revival of “Twentieth Century,” the 1932 comedy about a Broadway producer (Alec Baldwin) who, as a passenger on the Twentieth Century Limited train, meets a former discovery, Lily Garland (Ms. Heche), who has become a Hollywood star. The role earned Ms. Heche a Tony Award nomination for best performance by a leading actress in a play.
In his review in The Times, Ben Brantley wrote, “Her posture melting between serpentine seductiveness and a street fighter’s aggressiveness, her voice shifting between supper-club velvet and dime-store vinyl, Ms. Heche summons an entire gallery of studio-made sirens from the Depression era: Jean Harlow, the pre-mummified Joan Crawford and, yes, Carole Lombard, who famously portrayed Lily in Howard Hawks’s screen version of ‘Twentieth Century.’”
In 2004, Ms. Heche was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a mini-series or movie, for her performance in “Gracie’s Choice,” a TV film about a teenager faced with raising her half siblings after their drug-addicted mother is sent to prison.
She appeared most recently in the films “The Vanished” (2020), a psychological thriller, and “13 Minutes” (2021), which centers on a tornado, as well as several episodes of the courtroom drama “All Rise.”
Anne Celeste Heche was born on May 25, 1969, in Aurora, Ohio. Her father, Donald Hache, was an evangelical Christian and, it turned out, a closeted gay man. Her first acting role was in a New Jersey dinner theater production of “The Music Man,” which paid her $100 a week.
In 1983, after her father died of AIDS, her mother became a Christian therapist and lectured on behalf of James Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family about “overcoming” homosexuality.
Ms. Heche wrote in her 2001 memoir, “Call Me Crazy,” about being sexually abused by her father, and about her mother’s denial of that abuse. She said that when she called her mother after years of therapy to confront her about it, her mother ended the conversation by saying, “Jesus loves you, Anne,” before hanging up.
“People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life,” Ms. Heche said in an interview with The Times in 2009. “And it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love.”
In 2018, she said she had been fired from a job at Miramax when she refused to give oral sex to Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film magnate who founded the company with his brother, Bob, and who was accused of sexual assault by dozens of women. He was convicted of two felony sex crimes in 2020 and is serving a 23-year prison sentence.
“If I wasn’t sexually abused as a child, I don’t know if I would have had the strength to stand up to Harvey — and many others, by the way,” she told the podcast “Allegedly … With Theo Von & Matthew Cole Weiss.” “It was not just Harvey, and I will say that.”
LOS ANGELES — Anne Heche, the Emmy-winning film and television actor whose dramatic Hollywood rise in the 1990s and accomplished career contrasted with personal chapters of turmoil, died of injuries from a fiery car crash. She was 53.
Heche was “peacefully taken off life support,” spokeswoman Holly Baird said in a statement Sunday night.
Heche had been on life support at a Los Angeles burn center after suffering a “severe anoxic brain injury,” caused by a lack of oxygen, when her car crashed into a home Aug. 5, according to a statement released Thursday by a representative on behalf of her family and friends.
She was declared brain-dead Friday, but was kept on life support in case her organs could be donated, an assessment that took nine days. In the U.S., most organ transplants are done after such a determination.
A native of Ohio whose family moved around the country, Heche endured an abusive and tragic childhood, one that helped push her into acting as a way of escaping her own life. She showed enough early promise to be offered professional work in high school and first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera “Another World” from 1987 to 1991, winning a Daytime Emmy Award for the role of twins Marley and Vicky Hudson, who on the show sustained injuries that anticipated Heche’s: Vicky falls into a coma for months after a car crash.
By the late 1990s Heche was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, a constant on magazine covers and in big-budget films. In 1997 alone, she played opposite Johnny Depp as his wife in “Donnie Brasco” and Tommy Lee Jones in “Volcano” and was part of the ensemble cast in the original “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
The following year, she starred with Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights” and appeared with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix in “Return to Paradise.” She also played one of cinema’s most famous murder victims, Marion Crane of “Psycho,” in Gus Van Sant’s remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, and co-starred in the indie favorite “Walking and Talking.”
Around the same time, her personal life led to even greater fame, and both personal and professional upheaval. She met Ellen DeGeneres at a the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar party, in love and began a 3-year relationship that made one of Hollywood’s first openly gay couples. But Heche later said her career was damaged by an industry wary of casting her in leading roles. She would remember advisers opposing her decision to have DeGeneres accompany her to the premiere of “Volcano.”
“We were tapped on the shoulder, put into her limo in the third act and told that we couldn’t have pictures of us taken at the press junket,” Heche said in 2018 on the podcast Irish Goodbye.
After she and DeGeneres parted, Heche had a public breakdown and would speak candidly of her mental health struggles.
Heche’s delicately elfin look belied her strength on screen. When she won the National Board of Review’s 1997 best supporting actress award, the board cited the one-two punch of “Donnie Brasco” and the political satire “Wag the Dog,” in which Heche portrayed a cynical White House aide and held her own against film great Robert De Niro.
Heche also called effectively on her apparent fragility. In 2002 she starred on Broadway in the play “Proof” as a woman fearful of losing her sanity just like her father, a brilliant mathematics professor. An Associated Press review praised her “touching performance, vulnerable yet funny, particularly when Catherine mocks the suspicions about her mental stability.”
In the fall of 2000, soon after her break-up with DeGeneres, 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.
In a memoir released the following year, “Call Me Crazy,” Heche talked about her lifelong battles. During a 2001 interview with TV journalist Barbara Walters, Heche recounted in painful detail alleged sexual abuse by her father, Donald Heche, who professed to be devoutly religious and died in 1983 from complications of AIDS. Heche described her suffering as so extreme she developed a separate personality and imagined herself descended from another planet.
In the final days of his life, Heche said, she learned he was secretly gay and that she believed his inability to live honestly fueled his anger and hurtful behavior. Not longer her father died, her brother Nathan — one of her four siblings — was killed in a car crash.
“I’m not crazy. But it’s a crazy life. I was raised in a crazy family and it took 31 years to get the crazy out of me,” Heche told Walters. In an effort to escape the past, “I drank. I smoked. I did drugs. I had sex with people. I did anything I could to get the shame out of my life.”
Heche dated Steve Martin in the 1990s, and is widely believed to have inspired the childlike, but ambitious aspiring actor played by Heather Graham in his Hollywood spoof “Bowfinger.” She later had a son with camera operator Coleman Laffoon, to whom she was married from 2001 to 2009. She had another son during a relationship with actor James Tupper, her co-star on the TV series “Men In Trees.”
Heche worked consistently in smaller films, on Broadway and on TV shows in the past two decades. She recently had recurring roles on the network series “Chicago P.D.” and “All Rise,” and in 2020 was a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars.”
Anne Heche, an actress whose roles ranged from a stress-ball White House aide in “Wag the Dog” to a Bates Motel stabbing victim in a remake of “Psycho,” but who claimed she was “blacklisted” from major studio projects in the late 1990s after she and Ellen DeGeneres broke ground as a celebrity same-sex couple, was taken off life support on Aug. 14.She was 53.
Her death, at a hospital in Los Angeles, was confirmed by her publicist Holly Baird. Ms. Heche had been hospitalized after driving her vehicle into a house in the city’s Mar Vista neighborhood on Aug. 5. The car was engulfed in flames, and she was pulled from the vehicle with severe burns. According to a statement one of her representatives released Friday, she suffered a severe anoxic brain injury and was declared brain dead, and was kept on life support so that her organs could be donated.
An initial blood test found narcotics in her system, Los Angles police spokesman Tony Im told The Washington Post on Thursday night, but a full toxicology report was pending to determine if any substance was related to medical treatments.
Ms. Heche (pronounced “haysh”) first gained acclaim in the 1990s in supporting roles such as the beleaguered wife of an undercover cop (played by Johnny Depp) in the 1997 crime drama “Donnie Brasco” and as a tightly wound presidential staffer in the political satire “Wag the Dog,” with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, later that same year. She often used her wispy and sprite-like look to contrast the sharp edges of her dramatic characters and as a comedic asset while taking quirky roles in rom-coms and other films.
Anne Heche’s family and friends share their love, sorrow at her death
Her breakthrough came with leading parts in several films released in 1998, including “Six Days Seven Nights,” in which she played a New York journalist stranded on a deserted Pacific island with a small-plane pilot (Harrison Ford) and “Psycho,” in the role of embezzler Marion Crane, whose stabbing death in a shower, with blood circling the drain, gained a place in Hollywood fame for Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 original.
Ms. Heche claimed the film industry turned its back on her after her relationship with DeGeneres, a comedian who starred in the ABC sitcom “Ellen,” became public just as “Six Days” began shooting — although she praised Ford for standing by her and ensuring that she remained in the cast.
She insisted thatopportunities for leading roles began to dry up because of the romance at a time when few celebrities who were gay felt comfortable openly discussing their sexuality.Ms. Heche, in a 2021 interview with the New York Post, said she felt like “patient zero in cancel culture.” DeGeneres’s “Ellen” was dropped after the show’s character — and the real DeGeneres — came out as gay. Advertisers fled, ratings slumped and DeGeneres went on to host “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” a long-running talk and variety program.
‘Ellen made gay okay’: TV host celebrates 20th anniversary of sitcom’s coming-out episode
Ms. Heche and DeGeneres attended the 1997 premiere of “Volcano,” in which Ms. Heche played a scientist trying to save Los Angeles from lava after a volcanic eruption. Ms. Heche claimed executives from U.S. distributor Fox advised them not to attend as a couple. They soon became sought-after stars for fundraisers and rallies for same-sex equality.
Ms. Heche and DeGeneres announced plans in 1999 for a civil union in Vermont if the statelegalized the partnership,but they ended their relationship the next year. Ms. Heche went onto marry cameraman Coleman “Coley” Laffoon in 2001. They divorced in 2009.
“I was part of a revolution that created a social change,” Ms. Heche told Mr. Warburton magazine in 2020, “and I could not have done that without falling in love with [DeGeneres].”
Ms. Heche at times made headlines for erratic behavior she attributed to psychological problems caused by her father, an organist and choir leader whom she accused of sexually abusing her. Ms. Heche’s mother, Nancy, and sister Abigail denied any such abuse took place. (Ms. Heche’s father died in 1983 from what she described as AIDS-related causes.)
In August 2000, Ms. Heche wandered into the desert outside Fresno, Calif., reportedly wearing only a bra, shorts and sneakers, and ended up knocking on the door of a house. Police were eventually called and Ms. Heche, according to television station KSEE, offered a rambling statement that included references to traveling to heaven on a spaceship.
In her 2001 memoir, “Call Me Crazy,” she described creating alter egos, including one as a half sister of Jesus Christ named “Celestia,” as a way to deal with her inner demons. On CNN’s “Larry King Live” in 2001, she saidshefelt “insane” for 31 years before finding “peace and balance.” Not even her therapist knew of her struggles, she said.
“I was raised to always tell everybody that everything was fine,” she said, “and even though I was in therapy for years, I never told anybody that I had another personality. I never told anybody that I heard voices and spoke to God. I never told anybody any of it.”
Anne Celeste Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio, on May 25, 1969, and was the youngest of five children in a family that, by Ms. Heche’s accounts, moved frequently and often scraped by with barely enough money for rent and necessities.
She told the Daily Telegraph that when she was 12, the family was forced to live for a time in a single room in the home of a member of their church congregation in Ocean City, N.J. During that time, she found a job at a hamburger stand on the boardwalk.
“That’s where I first became an actress,” she recounted to Suburban Life magazine. “I literally started singing for my supper, right on the boardwalk. I would flip burgers and sing show tunes to get people to come to our stand.”
After she moved to Chicago as a teenager, an agent spotted Ms. Heche in a play at the Francis W. Parker School and asked to bring her to New York for daytime soap opera auditions. Her mother insisted she finish high school, Ms. Heche recalled.
A day after graduation, she landed a dual role on NBC’s “Another World” playing identical twins Vicky Hudson (sinister) and Marley Love (upstanding) from1987 to 1991.
Ms. Heche was rarely without a role or project since the 1990s, appearing in dozens of films and TV shows and several Broadway productions including opposite Alec Baldwin in “Twentieth Century.” She was nominated for a 2004 Tony Award for best actress in a play for her role as a narcissistic and glamorous leading lady.
She appeared in many independent films. In 2004, Ms. Heche played a supporting role in “Birth” alongside Nicole Kidman, about a woman who believes her dead husband is reincarnated as a 10-year-old boy. In the 2016 dark comedy “Catfight,” Ms. Heche and Sandra Oh portray quarrelsome rivals locked in a lifetime of dirty tricks and grudge settling.
In addition to Ms. Heche’s mother and sister, survivors include a son, Homer, from her marriage to Laffoon, and another son, Atlas, from a relationship with actor James Tupper.
In a life marked by difficulty, Ms. Heche expressed enduring regret that she had never had the opportunity to attend college. But she found satisfaction and fulfillment in her work.
“My training ground in school was in the best acting school,” she said in an interview with NPR’s “Fresh Air” in 2000. “There’s nothing better than working five days a week and being in front of the camera every day.”
LOS ANGELES, Aug 14 (Reuters) – American actor Anne Heche was taken off life support on Sunday, nine days after suffering severe injuries in a fiery car crash, as a compatible person was found to receive her donated organs, a spokesperson said.
Heche, 53, had been legally dead since Friday, though still with a heartbeat, and was kept on life support to preserve her organs so they could be donated, her representatives said.
“Anne Heche has been peacefully taken off life support,”
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spokesperson Holly Baird said in a statement.
Heche’s Mini Cooper sped out of control, plowed into a house and burst into flames on Aug. 5, leading to an agonizing hospital stay with increasingly grave messages from her family and representatives.
On Friday, one of her two sons, 19-year-old Homer Laffoon, issued statement saying: “My by brother Atlas and I lost our Mom.”
Heche, who starred in the movies “Donnie Brasco,” “Wag The Dog” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” struggled for decades with the fallout from a troubled childhood and was part of a groundbreaking same-sex couple in the 1990s.
Winner of a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991 for her roles as identical twin sisters in the NBC soap opera “Another World,” Heche starred in the 1998 adventure comedy “Six Days Seven Nights” with Harrison Ford and played alongside Demi Moore and Cher in the HBO TV movie “If These Walls Could Talk.”
She became one half of Hollywood’s most famous same-sex couple at the time when she dated comedian and actress Ellen DeGeneres. Against the wishes of her studio, Heche came out publicly at the 1997 red carpet premiere for disaster movie “Volcano,” taking DeGeneres along as her date.
The pair were together for more than three years before Heche ended the relationship.
In an interview with Page Six entertainment website in October 2021, Heche said she was “blacklisted” by Hollywood because of her relationship with DeGeneres. “I didn’t do a studio picture for 10 years. I was fired from a $10 million picture deal and did not see the light of day in a studio picture.”
In 2001, she married Coleman Laffoon, a cameraman. After the couple divorced, Heche began a long-term relationship with actor James Tupper which ended in 2018.
Anne Celeste Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio on May 25, 1969, and was the youngest of five children. At age 13, she was shocked by her father’s death from AIDS and from the revelation that he had had secret gay relationships.
“He was in complete denial until the day he died,” Heche told CNN’s Larry King in 2001. She said in 1998 that his death taught her that the most important thing in life is to tell the truth.
Her brother, Nathan, died three months after their father in a car crash.
Heche said her father raped her as a child, causing her mental health struggles for decades after, including frequent fantasies that she was from another planet.
“I’m not crazy,” Heche told ABC News in 2001 on the release of her book “Call Me Crazy: A Memoir.”
“But it’s a crazy life. I was raised in a crazy family and it took 31 years to get the crazy out of me.”
Heche’s mother, Nancy, denied her daughter’s claim that she knew about the sexual abuse, calling it “lies and blasphemies” and her sister Abigail has said she believes the “memories regarding our father are untrue.” She said that Anne Heche had cast doubt herself on her own memories of that time.
Later in her career, Heche starred as a senior member of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the NBC TV series “The Brave” and appeared on competition show “Dancing With The Stars” in late 2020.
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Reporting Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta and Alistair Bell; Editing by Kim Coghill, Robert Birsel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Anne Heche began acting in dinner theater at age 12 and enjoyed a prolific career in TV and film for the past 30 years. From playing separated-at-birth twins on Another World and fronting Men in Trees to starring in features including Six Days Seven Nights, Psycho and Volcano, she became a familiar face and beloved actress.
Scroll through a photo gallery of her long career by clicking on the image above.
Anne Heche “Not Expected To Survive” After Severe Brain Injury, Will Be Taken Off Life Support
Heche has been adept at comedy and drama, lead and supporting roles and big or small screens. After breaking out on Another World in the late 1980s — in a Daytime Emmy-winning dual role still revered by soap opera fans — she did supporting turns opposite A-list stars in such early-’90s features as I’ll Do Anything and Milk Money before landing a lead opposite Josh Charles in 1995’s Pie in the Sky.
Her career exploded from there.
In just three years, Heche starred or had key roles in Walking and Talking (1996); Donnie Brasco, Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Wag the Dog (all 1997); and Six Days Seven Nights, Return to Paradise and Psycho (all 1998).
She also recurred on TV’s Ally McBeal (2001) and Everwood (2004-05) before starring as a smug NYC relationship expert in the 2006-08 ABC comedy Men in Trees. From there she co-starred in the 2009-11 HBO dramedy Hung, playing the ex-wife of a high school teacher and coach (Thomas Jane) who takes a side gig as a gigolo to her support their kids.
Anne Heche Lifetime Movie ‘Girl In Room 13’ Still On Track Following Car Crash
Numerous film and TV roles followed, and Heche most recently appeared in the OWN/ABC drama All Rise and wrapped a role in the human-trafficking telefilm Girl in Room 13.
