American screen and stage actress, a waifish blonde who began her career at 17 in New York, cast in the soap Another World, where she played twins for four years, staying through 1991 and earning an Emmy Award for her work in the process. After leaving the soap, Heche (pronounced “Haytch”) did an occasional TV show but stayed mostly in the shadows. In 1996, she had a breakthrough film role in Walking and Talking, a well-received independent. The same year, she had a supporting role as Demi Moore’s best friend in The Juror. Her exposure increased exponentially when she appeared in Wag the Dog and as Johnny Depp’s wife in the highly acclaimed Donnie Brasco (1997). Her later TV career included lead roles in the series Men in Trees (2006-2008), Hung (2009-2011), Save Me (2013), Aftermath (2016) and The Brave (2017-2018).
She received acclaim for her role in the television film Gracie’s Choice, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and for her work on Broadway, particularly Twentieth Century, for which she received a Tony Award nomination.
Heche was born in a small town and raised as a fundamentalist Christian, though stability was lacking due to 11 moves by the time she was 12. The youngest of five kids, she was the daughter of a Baptist minister who died of complications from AIDS in 1983 at age 45. He disclosed his homosexuality to his family prior to his death. Anne was 13 at the time and later said, “I put a very high premium on honesty. What I learned from my father’s death is that if you don’t accept your sexuality, it will kill you.” She was estranged from her mother since disclosing her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. Her brother died in a car accident at age 18, three months after the death of their father. One sister, Susan Bergman, was an editor and author of a memoir about their dad and his “secret” life, Anonymity (1998).
In the late ‘80s Anne was involved with Richard Burgi, her co-star in Another World. She and actor-comedian Steve Martin were a couple from 1993-1995, but the relationship that earned the most play from the media was her affair with comedian Ellen DeGeneres. They met on Oscar night, 23 March 1997. Hecht said, “I became oblivious to everything the second I saw Ellen. I’d never been attracted to a woman before. I mean, I loved women, but not at all physically. Within seconds of meeting Ellen, I had my hands on her.” They left the function together and began their relationship that night. When Ellen came out of the closet as a lesbian on her show at the episode on 30 April 1997, Heche was a loyal backup. Their affection and openness made the two women veritable poster-girls for gay pride in Hollywood and elsewhere. They began appearing together in public, a move which was perhaps riskier for Heche, as she said she had not crossed that sexual gender-line before falling in love with DeGeneres. The decision to go public made her agents aghast and they said it would be the death of her career. She fired them and took the media attention with a great show of serenity. Harrison Ford supported her as his co-star in the romantic comedy Six Days, Seven Nights.
Heche went on to give another strong performance as a lawyer in Return to Paradise and then landed the much-sought-after role in the 1998 re-make of Psycho. The film did not do well, nor did the drama, The Third Miracle.
She made her directorial debut with Reaching Normal in 1999, and the following year wrote and directed a segment of the HBO drama If These Walls Could Talk 2, a segment about a lesbian couple willing to do anything to have a baby, starring Sharon Stone and DeGeneres.
The summer of 2000 in San Jose, while Heche had directed a documentary about DeGeneres’ return to standup comedy, 26-year-old cameraman Coleman Laffoon was part of the crew. There was a strange incident on 19 August 2000 when Heche mysteriously wandered up to the rural Fresno home of strangers and asked to take a shower (she was briefly hospitalized and released). It was apparently a segment of trauma in the breakup of her relationship with DeGeneres after 3 1/2 years together. Laffoon was on hand to be supportive, and they became inseparable. On 25 May 2001, he asked her to be his partner for life and she accepted. They married on 1 September 2001 in Los Angeles with about 75 friends and relatives in attendance. They took their honeymoon after Heche completed a ten-city book tour to promote her autobiography, Call Me Crazy.
In her memoir, Heche revealed that she spent the first 31 years of her life suffering from mental illness that she says was triggered by sexual abuse by her father. The term she used was “insane,” explaining that she believed she was two people. One was Anne Heche and the other was Celestia, who was from another planet and spoke directly to God in a different language. As for the present, “I’m here,” says Heche. “I could not be more elated with my life.” Her joyful attitude also included the news that she was three-months pregnant.
She and her husband welcomed Homer Heche Lafoon on 2 March 2002 at 1:54 AM in Los Angeles, California. On 24 January 2007 she announced her split from Coley Laffoon. The reason? She had been having an affair with her Men in Trees costar, Canadian actor James Tupper. Her divorce from Coley Lafoon became finalized on 6 June 2008 in Los Angeles. In March 2009 she gave birth to a second son, Atlas Heche Tupper. Heche and James Tupper separated in 2018.
On 5 August 2022, Heche was involved in a sequence of two car crashes in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, first when the Mini Cooper she was driving hit a garage at an apartment complex, and second when she crashed into a house, resulting in a fiery blaze that left her severely burned. The 53-year-old Heche was declared brain dead a few days later on 12 August 2022, but remained on life support to assess organ donor viability and locate recipients. On 14 August it was announced that organ recipients had been found and that her body would undergo the organ donation procedure that afternoon. That evening, her publicist announced that she had been “peacefully taken off life support.” The office of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner recorded the cause of death as “inhalation and thermal injuries”, with “sternal fracture due to blunt trauma” listed as an “other significant condition”, and ruled her death an accident. Her family released a statement saying they “lost a bright light, a kind and most joyful soul”.
Link to Wikipedia biography
Link to Astrodienst discussion forum