During Anne Heche’s childhood, cinema and television were considered tools of the devil. The actress grew up as the daughter of fundamentalist Christians, and the parents had radical methods of upbringing. For example, Heche and her three siblings were hit with a wooden spoon when they talked about “uncomfortable things” – and from their parents’ point of view, pretty much everything in life was unpleasant. The children learned to say, “There are four children in our family and one sister who has died and is in heaven with Jesus.” Questions about the sister’s death meant beatings with a wooden spoon. Even books were frowned upon in the Heche household, only the reciting of Bible verses was accepted as an adequate pastime.
Heche described this childhood in detail and brutally in her autobiography “Call Me Crazy”, which she wrote in her early thirties. The wooden spoon was the smallest problem. Her father Donald sexually abused her throughout her childhood until she was 12, says Heche. The mother Nancy didn’t want to admit it, took her frustration out on her daughter. She has repeatedly complained that Anne was so difficult to change diapers as a toddler because her private parts were constantly sore. The father also led a double life: he, the strict Christian, was secretly gay – and died in 1983 as a result of AIDS. Anne, then still a teenager, feared for a long time that she had contracted the virus.
As an adult, after years of therapy, she again confronted her mother with the abuse, Heche later told the New York Times. She then only said: “Jesus loves you, Anne” – and then hung up. After the father’s death, the mother founded a self-help group to help other “affected people” to “overcome” their homosexuality.
After she came out as a lesbian, there were suddenly no more big offers for roles
One escape during those years was school drama at Heches High School in New Jersey and other small amateur performances. She was so good as a teenager that she got her first TV offers, all of which she turned down until she graduated in 1987. After that, she starred in the soap “Another World” for four years – her entry into the Hollywood business.
Bigger movie roles followed, for example with Johnny Depp in “Donnie Brasco”, with Robert De Niro in “Wag the Dog” and with Harrison Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights”. Heche became a star of the 1990s. She was blonde and blue-eyed like so many other women in Hollywood, at first glance a screen prototype of her time. But she brought a self-irony and a certain ambiguity to the screen that most of her other colleagues lacked. She was a face that was immediately recognizable.
A particularly daring project came about in 1998: director Gus Van Sant hired her for a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. Although remake is actually too weak an expression. It was more of a homage, an experiment, as Van Sant faithfully recreated the black-and-white classic almost take for take, only with different actors and in color. Heche played the lead role of Marion Crane, who is murdered in the shower, following in the footsteps of her great predecessor, Janet Leigh.
Of course, the family history continued to accompany her during these years, and it continued to develop tragically. Her brother Nathan died in a car accident under mysterious circumstances just a few months after their father. Her older sister Susan wrote a book about her father and his double life in the mid-1990s, and she died of a brain tumor in 2006.
In addition to personal problems, there were professional ones. In 1997, Anne Heche had herself at a magazine Oscar party Vanity Fair in love with comedian and host Ellen DeGeneres. She had previously been in a relationship with men, including fellow actor Steve Martin. Now she and DeGeneres have become America’s most famous lesbian couple – with consequences for Heche’s career. She hardly got any big offers for movie roles anymore. Apparently, Hollywood bosses didn’t want to see gay women in their blockbusters, which were strictly straight at the time. Heche then played a lot of television again, including in the series “Ally McBeal” and “Nip/Tuck”.
After about three years, DeGeneres broke up and Heche suffered a mental breakdown. She showed up near Fresno, California, wearing only a bra and shorts, knocked on the nearest door and asked if she could take a quick shower before leaving Earth on a spaceship.
Just as she never made a secret of the traumas of her childhood, she also dealt with this psychosis openly. She later reported that over the years she had developed a second personality called Celestia. According to her self-diagnosis, Celestia emerged after her mother refused to admit her father’s abuse, even after repeated confrontation: “In that moment, I split from myself.”
Just a few days after the birth of her son, she was back in front of the camera
Heche also recovered from this incident, at least that’s how it appeared on the outside. She had two sons, one with cameraman Coley Laffoon, born in 2002, and one with actor James Tupper, born in 2009. Only the cinema offers remained, at least the big ones. From time to time she starred in smaller indie films such as the very nice tragic comedy “Welcome to Cedar Rapids”; otherwise continued on television, for example in the sci-fi series “Aftermath”. She also appeared occasionally on Broadway. Work was a distraction she must have found almost addictive: she was back on set for the HBO comedy series Hung in 2009, just a week after the birth of her second son. Most recently, among other things, she shot the TV film “Girl in Room 13”, which according to the broadcaster Lifetime was a project close to her heart and is to be broadcast in September.
On August 5, Heche was in a serious car accident in Los Angeles. First, she is said to have rammed a garage wall and then drove her car into a house, which caused a fire. According to several media reports, the police are investigating suspected driving under the influence of drugs. Traces of cocaine and painkillers are said to have been found in her blood. Shortly after the accident, she fell into a coma. A spokesman said she suffered severe head and lung injuries and burns.
According to her family, Anne Heche died on August 12 at the age of 53 at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles. According to this, brain death occurred in her case, according to the laws in California a person is considered dead. Heche is still connected to machines in order to be able to donate organs.