American actor Anne Heche has died, a week after being seriously injured in a car accident, a friend said in an Instagram post.
Nancy Davis wrote on Instagram: “Heaven has a new angel. My dear, kind, funny, endearing, beautiful friend @anneheche has gone to heaven. I will miss her dearly and cherish all the beautiful memories we shared.
“Anne was always the kindest and most thoughtful person who always brought out the best in me… My heart is broken.”
On Friday afternoon, TMZ, the US online media outlet, reported that Heche was “brain dead”, which is the definition of death under California law. It was announced earlier in the day that Heche would be taken off life support.
Heche was 53 years old and had two children.
Many expected Heche to recover after a publicist for the actor reported her in “stable” condition after she crashed her car into a Los Angeles home on August 5. Firefighters said she had been talking to them when they pulled her from the wreckage and took her to the hospital.
But the actor soon lost consciousness, and on August 8 reps released an update saying Heche was in “extremely critical condition” and had slipped into a coma. Her family said in a statement Friday that she was not expected to survive and was being kept on life support to determine whether her organs could be donated.
A sharp-witted actor, Heche rose to prominence in the early 1990s playing twins in the soap opera Another World and in film roles, including the part of Laura in Nicole Holofcener’s feature debut Walking and Talking.
Her first major role was as Johnny Depp’s girlfriend in the gangster drama Donnie Brasco (1997). In the same year he was involved in other enduring titles: the political satire Wag the Dog, the disaster film Volcano and the slasher classic I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Done to Donnie Brasco. Photograph: Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy
Also that year, Heche began a high-profile relationship with comedy star and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, shortly after the comedian came out as gay. The couple were together for three years; Heche spoke of his gratitude to Harrison Ford, who continued to produce the romance Six Days, Seven Nights, despite the homophobic backlash to Heche’s real-life relationship.
In 1998, she starred as Marion Crane in Gus van Sant’s revisionist remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho, then averaged one film a year for the next decade, choosing creatively ambitious projects to juggle the responsibilities of parents
She played Nicole Kidman’s sister in Jonathan Glazer’s psychological drama Birth, and Ashton Kutcher’s girlfriend in the comedy Spread. In 2011, she appeared in the award-winning indie comedy Cedar Rapids and starred as the ex-wife of corrupt cop Woody Harrelson in Rampart.
Recent key film roles include serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother in a 2017 biopic and as an enraged artist opposite Sandra Oh in the acclaimed 2016 black comedy Catfight. film, Benjamin Lee of The Guardian called it “a rare comedy with something to say and a unique, ambitious structure that goes far beyond its limited budget.
“Both leads are excellent, and Heche in particular has proven to be a welcome presence on the big screen who can inhabit more than just a supporting character.”
He was also a contestant on the 2020 season of the American show Dancing with the Stars.
In 2001, Heche published a memoir, Call Me Crazy, detailing her turbulent upbringing as the youngest of five children in a family that moved 11 times during her childhood.
Heche and Ellen DeGeneres in 1998. Photo: Héctor Mata/AFP/Getty Images
When Heche was 13, his father died of AIDS, which he said he contracted from same-sex partners. Heche also claimed that her father repeatedly raped her as a child, which led to her contracting genital herpes as a young woman. Other members of his family denied the claim.
Three months after his father’s death, Heche’s brother Nathan died in a car accident, which his sister claimed was a suicide. Heche became estranged from his mother soon after.
In 2000, Heche reportedly drove into the desert and walked some distance to a stranger’s ranch where he asked for a shower and then settled into the living room to watch a movie
The occupant of the home called the local sheriff after Heche showed no sign of leaving; the actor was briefly admitted to a psychiatric unit and admitted to taking ecstasy. In her book, Heche says she was “crazy” for the first 31 years of her life because of the abuse she said she suffered at the hands of her father.
Promoting the memoir, Heche said that in the past she would retreat for safety to an alter ego: Christ’s half-sister who had contact with extraterrestrial life forms.
In 2001, Heche married cameraman Coleman Laffoon, with whom she had a son. The marriage ended in divorce and in 2009, Heche had a son with James Tupper, her Men in Trees co-star.