Anne Heche has been “peacefully withdrawn from life support” nine days after suffering a “severe anoxic brain injury” in a car accident, a representative for the American actor has confirmed.
The 53-year-old woman had been taken to hospital in critical condition after driving her car into a home in Los Angeles.
She had been classified as “legally dead under California law,” but her family had asked that her heart continue to beat until a match for an organ donation was found, in accordance with her wishes.
On Sunday, a spokesman confirmed that recipients had been identified and surgeons were ready to remove and transplant “multiple organs”.
Heche’s Mini Cooper was said to have gone out of control, plowed into a house in the city’s Mar Vista area and burst into flames on August 5.
Image: Heche at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. Photo: Associated Press
In a statement, her family said they had “lost a shining light, a kind and joyful soul, a loving mother and a loyal friend.”
Earlier Sunday, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said they had concluded their investigation.
“As of today, there will be no further investigative efforts in this case,” police said in a statement.
“Any information or records that were requested prior to this turn of events will still be collected as they come in as a matter of procedure and will be included in the case as a whole. When a person suspected of a crime expires, no We present ourselves for your consideration.”
The department previously confirmed to the PA news agency that the crash was being investigated as a felony driving under the influence (DUI) traffic collision after preliminary blood tests revealed the presence of drugs in the system from Heche.
However, additional tests were required to rule out substances administered in the hospital.
Heche, who starred in the films Donnie Brasco, Wag The Dog and I Know What You Did Last Summer, is survived by his two sons, Atlas and Homer.
Winner of a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991 for her roles as identical twin sisters on the NBC soap opera Another World, Heche starred in the 1998 adventure comedy Six Days Seven Nights with Harrison Ford and acted opposite by Demi Moore and Cher in the HBO TV movie If. These walls could talk.
He became one half of Hollywood’s most famous same-sex couple at the time when he dated comedian and actor Ellen DeGeneres.
Pictured: Anne Heche, left, and Ellen DeGeneres in 1999
Against his studio’s wishes, Heche went public at the 1997 red carpet premiere for the disaster film Volcano, bringing DeGeneres as his date.
The couple were together for more than three years before Heche ended the relationship.
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, he was shocked by his father’s death from AIDS and the revelation that he had had secret gay relationships.
His brother Nathan died three months after his father in a car accident.