Celebrity

Anne Heche, Actress Known for ’90s Film Roles, Dies at 53

The actress, known for her roles in movies like ‘Six Days and Seven Nights’ and ‘Donnie Brasco’ and for her personal life, which included a three-year romance with comedian Ellen DeGeneres, died Sunday. 9 days after being in a devastating car accident in Los Angeles. she was 53 years old.

Her death was announced by a representative, Holly Baird, who said in an email late Sunday that Ms. Heche had been “peacefully taken off life support.”

Heche was seriously injured on August 5 when the Mini Cooper she was driving crashed into a two-story house in the Marvista neighborhood of Los Angeles, causing a fire that took more than an hour for firefighters to extinguish. I suffered. Ms. Heche, who was alone in her car, suffered burns and severe anoxic brain injury caused by lack of oxygen to her brain.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said police are continuing to investigate whether drug use contributed to the accident.

Heche remained in a coma at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles on Thursday night, according to a statement issued on behalf of the family by her publicist.

“Organ donation has long been her choice and she remains on life support to determine if she has viable organs,” the statement said.

On Friday, a representative said Heche was declared brain dead Thursday night.

Ms. Heche was a soap opera star before becoming known to movie audiences. In the late 1980s, straight out of high school, she starred in the daytime drama Another World, playing good-evil twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love. In 1991, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Young 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). She is Johnny Depp’s wife in “Donnie Brasco” (1997). She was an aide to the president in the political satire “Wag the Dog” (1997) with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. And fashion magazine editor Harrison in “Six Days, Seven Nights” (1998) crash-lands on a South Sea island in her Ford-piloted plane.

“Romantic comedies aren’t as conventional as this bouncing screwball Valentine, but they aren’t any more fun either.” Rita Kempley wrote in her review “Six Days Seven Nights” by The Washington Post. “The same polar quarrel that drew them together in this tropical adventure applies to Heche and Ford.”

Heche started dating DeGeneres in 1997. Homosexuality was not well accepted in Hollywood at the time. The relationship became widely known when she appeared hand-in-hand at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington in April of that year. A few days later, DeGeneres’ character on the sitcom “Ellen” announced that she was gay.

In revealing that Heche had been in a lesbian relationship, The New York Times said, “Hollywood faced a very sensitive issue: gay men whose careers were built on playing heterosexual roles.” how to deal with actresses in

After that relationship ended, Ms. Heche married and later divorced a man named Coleman Laffoon, with whom she had a son, Homer. She also had her son, Atlas Heche Tupper, from her relationship with actor James Tupper.

Complete information about her survivors was not immediately available.

Heche told the New York Post in 2021 that he was “blacklisted” in Hollywood because of his relationship with DeGeneres.

“I hadn’t done studio photography in 10 years,” she was quoted as saying.

After she starred in ‘Six Days, Seven Nights’ and starred as Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’, Janet Leigh’s first roles were largely It replaced guest appearances on television shows like “Allie McBeal” and “Nip/Tuck”.

She also appeared in the short-lived sitcom ‘Men in Trees’, had recurring roles in ‘Everwood’ and ‘Chicago PD’, and appeared in the HBO series ‘Hung’ starring Thomas Jane as a male prostitute.

She starred in the Broadway play “Proof” from 2002 until its closure in 2003, and in the 2004 resurrection “Twentieth Century,” starring a 1932 Broadway producer (Alec Baldwin) as a passenger in the Twentieth Century Limited. Appeared. On the train, he meets Lily Garland (Mr. Heche), a former discoverer turned Hollywood star. For her role, Ms. Heche was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress.

In a review for The Times, Ben Brantley wrote: From the Depression Era: Jean Harlow, pre-mummified Joan Crawford, and yes, Carole Lombard, best known for playing Lily in Howard Hawks’ 20th Century.”

In 2004, Ms. Heche was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Film. ‘Gracie’s Choice’ is a TV movie about her teenage years facing raising her half-brother after a drug addiction. Mother is sent to prison.

She recently appeared in the psychological thriller film ‘The Vanished’ (2020), the tornado-centric film ’13 Minutes’ (2021), and several episodes of the courtroom drama ‘All Rise’.

Anne Celeste Heche was born May 25, 1969 in Aurora, Ohio to Nancy and Donald Heche. Her father was an evangelical Christian and turned out to be a gay man. Her first acting role was in the New Jersey Dinner Theater production of ‘Music Man’ which paid her $100 a week.

In 1983, after his father died of AIDS, his mother became a Christian therapist and spoke on behalf of James Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family on “overcoming” homosexuality.

In her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, Heche wrote about being sexually abused by her father and her mother denying the abuse. When she called her mother after years of therapy to confront her about it, her mother said, “Jesus loves you, Anne,” before hanging up. said she was done with her conversation.

“People wonder why I speak so openly about the truth that happened in my life,” Heche said in a 2009 interview with The Times. For better or worse, I gave birth to a child with truth and love. ”

In 2018, she told Harvey Weinstein that she was fired from her job at Miramax when she refused to perform oral sex on her. A disgraced movie mogul who was accused of sexual assault from .

“If I hadn’t been sexually abused as a child, I don’t know if I would have had the strength to stand up to Harvey and many others. She told the podcast:“It wasn’t just Harvey. I would say yes.”

Vimal Patel contributed to the report.

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