Anne Celeste Heche (/heɪtʃ/ HAYTCH; May 25, 1969 – August 11, 2022 ) was an American actress, known for her roles across a variety of genres in film, television, and theater. She was the recipient of Daytime Emmy, National Board of Review, and GLAAD Media Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and a Primetime Emmy.
Anne Celeste Heche was born on May 25, 1969, in Aurora, Ohio, the youngest of five children of Donald "Don" Joe Heche and Nancy Heche (née Prickett). During her early childhood, the Heche family lived in various towns around Ohio, including suburbs of Cleveland and Akron. Heche's parents were fundamentalist Christians and the family was raised in a deeply religious environment, a situation that she later likened to being "raised in a cult". At the same time, her father led an unstable lifestyle, often changing professions and prone to frequent get-rich-quick schemes, though also with a real gift for music that led to jobs as a choir director in several churches. Heche noted in her memoir that her family changed denominations several times depending on which church her father found work in.
Because of Don Heche's often unstable lifestyle and financial situation, the family moved numerous times during her childhood. One of his financial schemes led the family to resettle in the Atlantic City, New Jersey, area in 1977, first in Ventnor City and later Ocean City. One of Anne's first jobs was at a boardwalk hamburger stand, where she would sing songs from Annie to attract customers.
Don Heche moved to New York City, where Anne and her sisters would occasionally visit him, noticing his declining health. He claimed it was cancer, when in fact he had developed late-stage AIDS. Although he lived as a gay man in New York, Don kept his sexuality and the nature of his illness from his family. His family did not know about his diagnosis and had not even heard of AIDS until coming across an article on the disease in The New York Times about a month before his death. Don Heche died from AIDS-related complications on March 3, 1983, aged 45. In a 1998 interview, Anne reflected that her father being closeted ultimately "destroyed his happiness and our family. But it did teach me to tell the truth. Nothing else is worth anything."
In 1987, at the end of her senior year, Heche was offered another audition, this time for the soap opera Another World. She was offered a role after two auditions and accepted, in spite of her mother's opposition. She moved to New York City and started work on the series, in her debut television role, just days after her high school graduation. In a later interview she stated, "I did my time with my mom in a one-bedroom, skanky apartment and I was done."
Heche also starred in several roles in Los Angeles theater productions in 1991 and 1992, including "Us & Them", a Generation X slice-of-life piece, and Getting Away With Murder, a stage adaptation of the James M. Cain stories Dead Man and The Baby in the Icebox, which were produced as part of the Mark Taper Forum-sponsored "Sundays at the Itchey Foot" series. In early 1993, Heche made her theatrical film debut in the little-seen independent film An Ambush of Ghosts, directed by Everett Lewis. Soon afterward, she appeared in the Disney film The Adventures of Huck Finn with Elijah Wood. Over the next two years, she performed mainly bit parts in feature films such as A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) and larger supporting roles in cable television movies such as Girls in Prison (1994) and Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long (1995).
Heche performed on Another World in the dual role of twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love. She continued on the series for nearly four years, from 1987 to 1991. She received several awards for her work on Another World, including a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series in 1991.
Heche received news of her Daytime Emmy Award for Another World while in Nebraska filming O Pioneers!. "Does this mean I'm an actress?" was her response in a telephone call with her agent following the news. The agent suggested that she relocate from New York City to Los Angeles, which she did days after shooting was completed on the film. O Pioneers! would air in February 1992 and was Heche's first TV movie. Her performance garnered some positive critical notice. After completing O Pioneers!, Heche starred in a guest appearance in an episode of Murphy Brown. Though this episode was shot after O Pioneers!, it aired in November 1991 and hence was her primetime television debut and her first screen appearance outside of Another World. After her Murphy Brown appearance, however, she felt that guest spots on television episodes would be detrimental to her long-term career success and mostly avoided TV guest spots until the 2000s.
Heche began her professional acting career on the NBC soap opera Another World (1987–1991), earning a Daytime Emmy Award for her portrayal of twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love. She made her film debut in 1993 with a small role in The Adventures of Huck Finn. Heche's profile rose in 1997 with appearances in Donnie Brasco, Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Wag the Dog. In 1998, she had starring roles in the romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights and the drama-thriller Return to Paradise.
Heche appeared in her first lead role (albeit receiving third billing) in Donald Cammell's straight-to-video erotic thriller Wild Side (1995), alongside Christopher Walken and Joan Chen. The film gained some notoriety for its inclusion of a very strong lesbian sex scene between Heche and Chen. In 1996, Heche had the starring role as a college student contemplating an abortion in a segment of the HBO anthology film If These Walls Could Talk, co-starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Cher. Also that year, she appeared opposite Catherine Keener portraying childhood best friends in the independent film Walking and Talking. The limited-release film garnered favorable reviews from critics and is number 47 on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time" list. Heche gained positive notice from film critic Alison Macor of The Austin Chronicle, who wrote in her review that she "is destined for larger film roles".
By the late 1990s, Heche continued to find recognition and commercial success as she took on supporting roles in three other 1997 high-profile film releases—Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Wag the Dog. The disaster film Volcano, about the formation of a volcano in Los Angeles, had her star with Tommy Lee Jones and Gaby Hoffmann, playing a seismologist. While critical response towards the film was mixed, it grossed US$122 million at the international box office. Heche portrayed the minor role of a backwoods loner in the slasher thriller sleeper hit I Know What You Did Last Summer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr. Despite her limited screen time in the film, Heche was considered a "standout" by some reviewers, such as Derek Eller of Variety. She obtained the part of a presidential advisor opposite Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman in the political satire Wag the Dog, a role that was originally written for a man. Budgeted at US$15 million, the film made US$64 million. She received the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1997 for her roles in Donnie Brasco and Wag the Dog.
Heche's relationship with DeGeneres and the events following their breakup became subjects of widespread media interest. They were described as "the world's first gay supercouple". Heche and DeGeneres started dating in 1997, and at one point said they would get a civil union if such became legal in Vermont. They broke up in August 2000. Heche stated that all of her other romantic relationships were with men. In the memoir Call Me Anne, submitted shortly before her death, she wrote that she never identified as a lesbian and did not regard the terms "gay" or "straight" as relevant to her.
In 1997, Heche starred in what has been described as her breakthrough role in the hit crime drama Donnie Brasco as the wife of the main character, an FBI undercover agent played by Johnny Depp. Critic Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Heche "does well with what could have been the thankless role".
Heche's next several films were made for cable television and featured then-partner Ellen DeGeneres in varying degrees of participation. The first of these (and the one with the widest release) came in 2000, when Heche directed a segment of If These Walls Could Talk 2 for HBO. An anthology film, it consisted of a series of segments about lesbian life in individual years over several decades. In Heche's segment, "2000", DeGeneres and Sharon Stone starred as a contemporary lesbian couple trying to have a baby together via artificial insemination. DeGeneres was also one of the executive producers of the film. In 2001, Heche directed another anthology film segment, this time part of On the Edge, a Showtime anthology of science fiction stories directed by different actresses. Heche's segment, titled Reaching Normal, was her screenplay adaptation of the short story Command Performance by Walter M. Miller Jr. The segment features Andie MacDowell and Paul Rudd in the story of a housewife who enters into a telepathic extramarital affair; the segment includes a cameo appearance by DeGeneres.
In 2000, Heche left DeGeneres for Coleman "Coley" Laffoon, a cameraman whom she met when she hired him as part of the camera crew for the television documentary Ellen DeGeneres: American Summer, which she was directing. On September 1, 2001, she and Laffoon married. They had a son, Homer Heche Laffoon, in March 2002. Laffoon filed for divorce in February 2007, after five and a half years of marriage. In a separate court filing, he said that Heche "exhibited bizarre and delusional behavior for which she refuses to seek professional help." The divorce was finalized in March 2009.
On August 19, 2000, immediately following her separation from DeGeneres, Heche drove on Interstate 5 from Los Angeles to the San Joaquin Valley. Exiting where she later said she "had been told" to go, she ended up in Cantua Creek, a rural area in western Fresno County, California. Heche left her vehicle at the side of a rural road and, wearing only a bra and shorts, walked 1.5 miles (2.4 km) in extremely hot weather without water, before feeling dehydrated and knocking on the door of a ranch house. The homeowner recognized Heche from Six Days, Seven Nights and was astonished that a celebrity would show up at her "in the middle of nowhere" location.
Events in Heche's personal life often upstaged her acting career. She was in a high-profile relationship with comedian Ellen DeGeneres between 1997 and 2000, with the pair being described by The Advocate as "the first gay supercouple". Immediately following her split from DeGeneres, she suffered a highly publicized psychotic break. In 2001, Heche published a memoir titled Call Me Crazy, in which she alleged extensive sexual abuse by her father.
Heche also directed a documentary that was to be released in 2001, Ellen DeGeneres: American Summer, about DeGeneres' 2000 stand-up comedy tour. The project was never completed. DeGeneres, who financed the documentary, states that she "burned" the film after attempting to salvage the project following the couple's split, but that the memories that it brought back were too painful.
In 2001, Heche published a memoir titled Call Me Crazy, which discussed her family and career background, as well as disclosed her history of mental illness and alleged childhood sexual abuse by her father. In 2021, on her Better Together podcast, she said that she was working on a second memoir tentatively titled Call Me Sane. In September 2022, the second memoir, now titled Call Me Anne, was submitted in manuscript form shortly before her death and was announced for a January 2023 publication.
Most of Heche's roles in the early 2000s were in independent films and television; she played the role of Dr. Sterling in the film adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's autobiography about depression, Prozac Nation, with Christina Ricci and Jessica Lange. Premiered at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival, the film received a DVD release in 2005. She appeared as a hospital administrator in the thriller John Q., about a father and husband (Denzel Washington) whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart. The production made US$102.2 million at the worldwide box office, despite negative reviews by critics. In 2001, Heche obtained a recurring role in the fourth season of the television series Ally McBeal.
Heche stated that she was insane for the first 31 years of her life, and that her insanity was triggered by the sexual abuse that her father subjected her to during her childhood. In a series of nationally televised interviews to promote Call Me Crazy in September 2001, she stated that she created a fantasy world called the "Fourth Dimension" and the alter ego "Celestia" to make herself feel safe. Heche said she recovered from her mental health concerns following the incident in Cantua Creek and had put her alter ego behind her.
In 2002, Heche made her Broadway debut in a production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Proof, in the role of a young woman who has inherited her father's mathematical genius and mental illness. The New York Times found Heche to be "consequential" in her portrayal and compared her to Mary-Louise Parker and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who had previously played the character, stating: "[...] Ms. Heche, whose stage experience is limited and who is making her New York stage debut at 33, plays the part with a more appeasing ear and more conventional timing, her take on the character is equally viable. Her Catherine is a case of arrested development, impatient, aggressively indignant, impulsive". In 2004, Heche received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the Lifetime movie Gracie's Choice, as well as a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the CBS television film The Dead Will Tell. In the same year, she performed on Broadway opposite Alec Baldwin in revival of the play Twentieth Century, about a successful and egomaniacal Broadway director (Baldwin), who has transformed a chorus girl (Heche) into a leading lady. For her performance, she was nominated for the 2004 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Also in 2004, Heche appeared alongside Nicole Kidman and Cameron Bright in the well-received independent drama Birth. She took on the recurring role on The WB drama Everwood during its 2004–05 season, and then a recurring role on Nip/Tuck as an ex-mob wife and Witness Protection Program subject who requires plastic surgery. Heche continued her television work with Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas film Silver Bells (2005) and in the Lifetime television film Fatal Desire (2006), about an ex-cop, played by Eric Roberts, who meets a woman on an online dating site who attempts to get him to kill her husband.
Heche appeared in the small-scale dramedy Sexual Life (2005), chronicling modern romantic life and co-starring Azura Skye and Elizabeth Banks. The film was screened on the film festival circuit and received a television premiere. In 2006 she began work on her own series, Men in Trees, in which she played a New York author who, after finding out her fiancé is cheating on her, moves to a small town in Alaska which happens to be abundant with single men and few women. Men in Trees was canceled in May 2008, after a season shortened by the writer's strike. During the airing of the show, Heche starred in the romantic comedy What Love Is (2007) and in Toxic Skies (2008), a science-fiction thriller based on the chemtrails conspiracy theory.
Heche appeared as the girlfriend of a narcissistic gigolo in the sex comedy Spread (2009), co-starring Ashton Kutcher. The film received a limited release in North American theaters while it made US$12 million at the worldwide box office. Matthew Turney of View London felt that "[t]here's also terrific support" from Heche in what he described as an "enjoyable, sharply written and beautifully shot LA drama". Also in 2009, she was cast in the HBO dramedy series Hung, in a supporting role as the ex-wife of a financially struggling high school coach-turned-male prostitute, portrayed by Thomas Jane. The series received favorable reviews and aired until 2011.
In 2009, Heche told The New York Times:
Heche left Laffoon for Men in Trees co-star James Tupper. During their relationship, Heche described herself and Tupper as being "eternally engaged". She and Tupper had a son, Atlas Heche Tupper, in March 2009. Tupper and Heche separated in January 2018.
In 2011, Heche told The Daily Telegraph that she had reconciled with her remaining sister Abigail, but doubted she would be able to repair her relationship with her mother.
On September 15, Heche's former boyfriend, James Tupper, filed a petition raising objections to Laffoon's. He argued that an email sent by Heche in 2011 describing her wishes in the event of her death should be treated as her will. Tupper's petition challenged Laffoon's qualifications to administer the estate, claiming that at 20 years of age he lacked the maturity required of an administrator, and that Laffoon's lack of personal assets and income would render him unable to post the required bond. Tupper concluded that he wished to act as executor and hire a professional fiduciary to manage the estate.
Heche starred with James Tupper, Jennifer Stone, and Rebekah Brandes in the supernatural horror film Nothing Left to Fear (2013), about a family's life in a new town being interrupted by an unstable man of the cloth. The film received a release for video-on-demand and selected theaters. It was panned by critics, and the Los Angeles Times remarked that both Heche and Tupper "should write apology notes to their fans". Also in 2013, Heche headlined the short-lived NBC sitcom Save Me, in which she starred as a Midwestern housewife who believes that she is channeling God. She played the waitress friend of a recovering gambling addict (Jason Statham) in the action thriller Wild Card (2014). Distributed for a VOD and limited release in certain parts of North America only, the film only grossed US$6.7 million internationally on a $30 million budget. Heche also had a recurring guest-role on The Michael J. Fox Show before its cancellation. In 2013, she signed a first look deal with Universal Television.
USA Network's action-adventure drama series, Dig, had Heche portray the head of the FBI field office in Jerusalem whose agents uncover a 2,000-year-old conspiracy while investigating an archaeologist's murder. The six-episode series premiered in late 2014. The following year, Heche guest-starred in the ABC thriller series Quantico playing the role of criminal profiler, Dr. Susan Langdon. On September 27, 2016, she starred in the post-apocalyptic action drama Aftermath, which debuted on Canada's Space network and on United States' Syfy. Heche played Karen Copeland, a United States Air Force pilot who must navigate Armageddon, with her university-professor husband Josh (James Tupper) and their three nearly adult children. Neither Dig nor Aftermath was renewed for a second season.
Elliot and Natalie Bergman, of the band Wild Belle, are Heche's nephew and niece. In 2017, she said that their album Dreamland was her favorite album and described herself as a "proud aunt".
Heche has also narrated several audiobooks, notably, a self-narrated audiobook of Call Me Crazy, as well as narrating audiobook versions of Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) and Tess Gerritsen's Vanish (2005; co-narrated by Ilyana Kadushin). In 2017, Heche hosted a weekly radio show on SiriusXM with Jason Ellis entitled Love and Heche. In late 2020, Heche and Heather Duffy Boylston launched a podcast titled Better Together.
In 2017, Heche played a supporting role in My Friend Dahmer as Joyce, the mentally ill mother of the teenaged Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch). She received positive reviews for her performance, with The Hollywood Reporter calling her "nerve-jangling perfection" and Empire calling her "entertainingly off-kilter".
On September 25, 2017, Heche debuted as the series lead playing DIA Deputy Director Patricia Campbell in the military/espionage thriller The Brave, which lasted for one season on NBC. In 2018, she joined the television series Chicago P.D. in a supporting role. In late 2020, Heche competed as one of the celebrities in the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars, but was eliminated from the contest after the fourth week. The following year, she co-starred in an ensemble cast in Lindsay Gossling's 13 Minutes about four families struggling with multiple dilemmas in a fictional Oklahoma town just before a devastating tornado hits.
In a January 2018 interview on the podcast Allegedly with Theo Von and Matthew Cole Weiss, Heche alleged that Harvey Weinstein had exposed himself to her and demanded oral sex, claiming to have been fired from an unspecified Miramax film in retaliation after she refused Weinstein's advances. She said that there were many other incidents of sexual harassment that took place during her career and stated that her survival of childhood sexual abuse had given her the strength to stand up to unwanted advances such as those made by Weinstein. A spokesman for Weinstein said that he had been "friendly" with Heche, but denied all of her allegations.
Heche and former Hung co-star Thomas Jane announced that they were in a relationship in 2019; they were together into 2020, but had separated by the time of her death.
From 1999 to 2001, Heche focused on directing, most notably a segment of the HBO television film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). She was nominated for a Tony Award for her starring role in the 2004 Broadway revival of Twentieth Century, as well as a Primetime Emmy Award that same year for her appearance in the television film Gracie's Choice. Other film appearances included Prozac Nation (2001), John Q. (2002), Birth (2004), Spread (2009), Cedar Rapids (2011), Catfight (2016), and My Friend Dahmer (2017). Heche also starred on a number of television series, such as The WB's Everwood (2004–2005), ABC's Men in Trees (2006–2008), and NBC's The Brave (2017–2018). In 2020, she appeared as a contestant on the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars, finishing in 13th place.
The Heche family's precarious financial situation led to the foreclosure of a home her father owned and later their eviction from a rental home. They moved in with a family from their church who offered them a place to live as an act of charity. Anne's mother separated from her father and demanded he leave the household. Her mother and all of the children then took jobs to support the family and be able to live on their own. Anne found work at a dinner theater in Swainton, her first professional acting job, earning $100 a week (about $300 per week in 2022 dollars).
At the time of her death in August 2022, Heche had completed filming several films that were still in post-production and where she would appear posthumously. One of these films was Girl in Room 13 that aired as part of Lifetime's "Ripped from the Headlines" film series. The movie is about human trafficking and was dedicated in memory of Heche. Wildfire: The Legend of the Cherokee Ghost Horse is slated to be the final screen performance for Heche, which is a family-appeal film based on the worldwide hit song by Michael Martin Murphey. She also appeared with Alec Baldwin in the disaster action film Supercell, released on March 17, 2023.
On August 5, 2022, Heche was critically injured in a high-speed car crash. She died at a Los Angeles hospital on August 11, 2022, at the age of 53.
On August 5, 2022, Heche was involved in a sequence of three motor vehicle collisions in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, the final collision being the most serious, inflicting critical injuries on Heche and destroying a house.
On August 31, 2022, Heche's older son Homer Heche Laffoon filed a petition in the Los Angeles County probate court claiming that Heche had died intestate, asking that he be named her estate's administrator. Laffoon's lawyer also stated that they wished to have a third party appointed guardian ad litem for Heche's younger son (and Laffoon's half-brother), Atlas Heche Tupper.
In November 2022, the court appointed Laffoon as general administrator of his mother's estate.
Law enforcement officials initially stated that Heche was "deemed to be under the influence and acting erratically" at the time of the crashes. The Los Angeles Police Department said that a preliminary blood analysis showed the presence of both cocaine and narcotics, including fentanyl, in her system; however, a more comprehensive analysis that took several months to complete was needed to determine whether the narcotics detected were given by the hospital or ingested earlier. On December 6, 2022, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner announced the results of Heche's autopsy, stating that she was not impaired by illicit substances at the time of the incident and that no active drugs were found in her system.
On December 6, 2022, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner announced the results of Heche's autopsy, stating that she was not impaired by illicit substances at the time of the incident and that no active drugs were found in her system. An inactive metabolite of cocaine was found through a blood test taken when Heche arrived at the hospital, which the coroner's office said indicates the drug was used in the past, but not at the time of the crash. Cannabinoids were detected in Heche's urine but not in the blood test, which was consistent with prior use, but not during the time of the incident. Fentanyl was also detected in Heche's system, but it was determined that it was from treatment she received at the hospital.
Heche's cremated remains were interred in a mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on May 14, 2023.