Anne Heche

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Anne Celeste Heche^[3] (/heɪtʃ/ HAYTCH;^[4][5][6] May 25, 1969 – August 2022)^[a] was an American actress. She first came to recognition portraying twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on the soap opera Another World (1987–1991), winning her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards. She achieved greater prominence in the late 1990s with roles in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco (1997), the disaster film Volcano (1997), the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), the political satire film Wag the Dog (1997), the action comedy film Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), and the drama-thriller film Return to Paradise (1998).

Following her portrayal of Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant‘s horror remake film Psycho (1998), which earned her a Saturn Award nomination, Heche went on to have roles in many well-received independent films, such as the drama film Birth (2004), the sex comedy film Spread (2009), Cedar Rapids (2011), the drama film Rampart (2011), and the black comedy film Catfight (2016). 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 in a restaging of the play Twentieth Century, for which she received a Tony Award nomination.

In addition to her film roles, Heche starred in the comedy drama television series Men in Trees (2006–2008), Hung (2009–2011), Save Me (2013), Aftermath (2016), and the military drama television series The Brave (2017).^[7] She voiced Suyin Beifong in the animated television series The Legend of Korra (2014), and appeared as a contestant in the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars (2020).

Contents

• 1Early life
• 2Career
  • 2.11987-1996: Early television and film roles
  • 2.21997-1999: Career breakthrough
  • 2.32000s
  • 2.42010–2022
• 3Media
• 4Personal life
  • 4.1Family of origin
  • 4.2Relationships
  • 4.3Mental health problems
  • 4.4Allegations against Harvey Weinstein
• 5Car crash and death
• 6Filmography
  • 6.1Film
  • 6.2Television
  • 6.3Direction
• 7Awards and nominations
• 8Books
• 9See also
• 10Notes
• 11References
• 12External links

Early life

Heche was born on May 25, 1969, in Aurora, Ohio, the youngest of five children of Nancy Heche (née Prickett) and Donald Joseph Heche.^[8][9] Heche’s family moved eleven times during her childhood; at one point, they lived in an Amish community.^[10] When asked in a 2001 interview on Larry King Live what her father’s source of income was, Heche replied, “Well, he was a choir director. But I don’t think he made much on that a week. He said that he was involved in a business of gas and oil, and he said that until the day he died, but he never was involved in the business of gas and oil ever.”^[11] The family settled in Ocean City, New Jersey, when Heche was twelve years old. Due to the family’s strained finances, she went to work at a dinner theater in Swainton.^[12][13] “At the time we’d been kicked out of our house and my family was holed up living in a bedroom in the home of a generous family from our church”, she said.^[14] “I got $100 a week, which was more than anyone else in my family. We all pooled our money in an envelope in a drawer and saved up enough to move out after a year.”^[14]

On March 3, 1983, when Heche was 13, her 45-year-old father died of HIV/AIDS, which she believed was contracted from a homosexual partner: “He was in complete denial until the day he died. We know he got it from his gay relationships. Absolutely. I don’t think it was just one. He was a very promiscuous man, and we knew his lifestyle then”, Heche said on Larry King Live.^[11] Heche said that he repeatedly raped her from the time she was an infant until she was 12, giving her genital herpes.^[15] When asked “But why would a gay man rape a girl?” in a 2001 interview with The Advocate, Heche replied “I don’t think he was just a gay man. I think he was sexually deviant. My belief was that my father was gay and he had to cover that up. I think he was sexually abusive. The more he couldn’t be who he was, the more that came out of him in [the] ways that it did.”^[15] In a 1998 interview, she 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.”^[16]

Three months after her father’s death, Heche’s 18-year-old brother Nathan was killed in a car crash.^[14] The official determination was that he fell asleep at the wheel and struck a tree,^[9] though Heche claimed it was suicide.^[17] The remainder of Heche’s family subsequently moved to Chicago, where Heche attended the progressive Francis W. Parker School. In 1985, when Heche was 16, an agent spotted her in a school play and secured her an audition for the daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Heche flew to New York City, auditioned, and was offered a job, but her mother insisted she finish high school first.^[13] Shortly before her high school graduation in 1987, Heche was offered a dual role on the daytime soap opera Another World. “Again I was told I couldn’t go. My mother was very religious and maybe she thought it was a sinner’s world”, Heche stated. “But I got on the phone and said, ‘Send me the ticket. I’m getting on the plane.’ I did my time with my mom in a one-bedroom, skanky apartment and I was done.”^[14]

Career

1987-1996: Early television and film roles

Heche had her debut television role was on the soap opera Another World in the role of Vicky Hudson, as well as her evil twin character Marley Love. Heche continued on the series for nearly 4 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.^[18] Her primetime television debut (and her first role in any medium outside of Another World) came in November 1991, in a guest appearance in episode of Murphy Brown.^[19] She made her TV movie debut the following year with a brief appearance in the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of O Pioneers! (1992). In 1993 Heche made her feature film debut in Disney’s The Adventures of Huck Finn with Elijah Wood. Over the next two years, she performed mainly in supporting roles in feature films such as I’ll Do Anything (1994) and cable television movies such as Girls in Prison (1994) and Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long (1995).

She appeared in her first lead role in Donald Cammell‘s erotic thriller Wild Side (1995), which gained some notoriety for it’s inclusion of a very strong lesbian sex scene between Heche and Joan Chen.^[20] In 1996, Heche had the starring role as a college student contemplating an abortion in a segment of the made-for-HBO anthology film If These Walls Could Talk, co-starring Cher and Demi Moore.^[21] Also in the 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.^[22] Heche gained positive notice from film critic Alison Macor of Austin Chronicle, who wrote in her review that she “is destined for larger film roles”.^[23]

1997-1999: Career breakthrough

Heche at the Primetime Emmy Awards in 1997

In 1997, Heche starred in what has been described as her breakthrough role as the wife of Johnny Depp‘s titular FBI undercover agent in the crime drama Donnie Brasco. The film made $124.9 million worldwide,^[24] and critic Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote: “[Heche] does well with what could have been the thankless role.”^[25] 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.^[26] She 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,^[27] such as Derek Eller writing for Variety.^[28] 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.^[13] Budgeted at US$15 million, the film made US$64 million.^[29]

Heche’s first lead role in a major film came in the 1998 romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights, where she appeared opposite Harrison Ford, portraying a New York City journalist who ends up with a pilot (Ford) on a deserted island following a crash landing. She had been cast in the film one day before her same-sex relationship with Ellen DeGeneres went public.^[30] Although Heche was cast in a second starring role shortly thereafter as Vince Vaughn‘s love interest in the drama Return to Paradise (1998), she felt that her relationship with DeGeneres destroyed her prospects as a leading woman.^[31] According to Heche, “People said, ‘You’re not getting a job because you’re gay'”.^[32] She commented: “How could that destroy my career? I still can’t wrap my head around it.”^[31] Six Days, Seven Nights received mixed reviews, but grossed US$74.3 million in North America and US$164.8 million worldwide.^[33] On her appearance in the dramatic thriller Return to Paradise, a writer for The New York Times remarked, “as Ms. Heche’s formidable Beth Eastern does her best to manipulate the other characters on [co-star Joaquin Phoenix‘s character] behalf, Return to Paradise takes on the abstract weightiness of an ethical debate rather than the visceral urgency of a thriller”.^[34]

Heche starred in Gus Van Sant‘s Psycho (1998), a remake of the 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the updated version, she took on the role originally played by Janet Leigh, Marion Crane, an embezzler who arrives at an old motel run by serial killer Norman Bates (played by Vince Vaughn in their second collaboration). Psycho earned negative reviews, and despite a US$60 million budget, it made US$37.1 million worldwide.^[35] In an otherwise negative review of the film, Janet Maslin of The New York Times felt that Heche was “refreshingly cast in Marion’s role”, while noting that her portrayal was “almost as demure as Ms. Leigh’s, yet she’s also more headstrong and flirty”.^[36] Her 1998 films were the only theatrically released films in which she had a leading role.^[37] Heche also starred opposite Ed Harris in the 1999 film, The Third Miracle, directed by Agnieszka Holland.^[38]

2000s

Most of her 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,^[39] despite negative reviews by critics.^[40] In 2001, she obtained a recurring role in the fourth season of the television series Ally McBeal.^[41]

In 2002 Heche made her Broadway debut in a production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Proof, acting as 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 comparing her to Mary-Louise Parker and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who had previously played her character in other productions of the play, stated: “[…] 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”.^[42] 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 acted opposite Alec Baldwin in revival of the play Twentieth Century on Broadway, 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.^[43]

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 in 2005 as an ex-mob wife and Witness Protection Program subject who requires plastic surgery. Heche continued her television work with her portrayal of a widow who does not celebrate Christmas in the made-for-CBS Silver Bells (2005),^[44] and a con woman who schemes a man she meets on a dating website in the made-for-Lifetime Fatal Desire (2006).^[45]

Heche in June 2007

Heche appeared in the small-scale dramedy Sexual Life (2005), chronicling the 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 Heche began work on her own series, Men in Trees. In the show, she starred as 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 horror-comedy Suffering Man’s Charity (2007),^[46] the romantic comedy What Love Is (2007),^[47] and the science-fiction thriller Toxic Skies (2008).^[48]

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.^[49] 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”.^[50] Also in 2009, she was cast in the HBO dramedy series Hung, as the ex-wife of a financially struggling high school basketball/baseball coach (portrayed by Thomas Jane). The series received favorable reviews and aired until 2011.^[51]

2010–2022

A cameo appearance as the CEO of an important company in the well-received comedy The Other Guys (2010), starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, was followed by a much larger role in the independent comedy Cedar Rapids (2011), where she portrayed a seductive insurance agent with whom a naive and idealistic man (played by Ed Helms) becomes smitten. The Sundance-premiered production garnered critical praise and was an arthouse success.^[52][53] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter remarked in its review for the film, “while Heche shines brightest in more brittle mode, as in HBO’s Hung, she strikes a sweet balance between Joan’s mischievous and maternal sides”.^[54]

In the drama Rampart (2011), she starred with Woody Harrelson and Cynthia Nixon, as one of the two former wives of a corrupt police officer (Harrelson), who also happen to be sisters. The film had a selected theatrical run following its premiere at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival, and garnered an overall positive response;^[55][56] The San Francisco Chronicle, pointing out Heche and her other female co-stars, remarked that they “allow Harrelson to shine – he has always had a way of preening for women – and he brings out the best in them”.^[57] Heche had the leading role in the comedy That’s What She Said (2012), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival,^[58] and also played the girlfriend of a former pro golfer (Colin Firth) in Arthur Newman (also 2012).^[59]

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 VOD and selected theaters.^[60] It was panned by critics,^[61] and the Los Angeles Times remarked that both Heche and Tupper “should write apology notes to their fans”.^[60] 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.^[62] She played the waitress friend of a recovering gambling addict (Jason Statham) in the action thriller Wild Card (2014).^[63] 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.^[64] She 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.^[65]

USA Network‘s action adventure drama series, Dig, had Heche portray the head of the FBI 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.^[66]

In 2015, Heche guest-starred in the ABC thriller series Quantico playing the role of criminal profiler, Dr. Susan Langdon.^[67] On September 27, 2016, the post-apocalyptic action drama Aftermath – starring Heche – debuted on Canada’s Space Network and on United States’ Syfy. Heche played Karen Copeland, a U.S. Air Force pilot from Washington, who must navigate Armageddon, along with her university-professor husband Josh (played by James Tupper, also a co-producer on the series) and their three nearly adult children. Neither Dig nor Aftermath was renewed for a second season.^[68][69]

Heche filmed the supporting part of the lead singer for a Broadway musical in Opening Night (2016), with Topher Grace. The musical comedy was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival.^[70][71] In another independent film, the comedy Catfight (2016), Heche starred opposite Sandra Oh, portraying two bitter rivals who pursue a grudge match that spans a lifetime. Like Heche’s previous film projects, the film premiered on the film-festival circuit and received a VOD and limited release,^[72] to largely favorable reviews from critics.^[73] Los Angeles Times wrote: “Oh and Heche are great here, giving performances entirely lacking in vanity and self-consciousness. They aren’t afraid to get ugly, both in their treatment of everyone around them as well as in their post-brawl bruises, which makes them that much funnier”.^[74]

In 2017, Heche played a supporting role in My Friend Dahmer as the teenaged Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch)’s mentally ill mother, Joyce.^[75] She received positive reviews for her performance, with The Hollywood Reporter calling her “nerve-jangling perfection”^[76] and Empire calling her “entertainingly off-kilter”.^[77]

On September 25, 2017, Heche debuted as the series lead playing (fictional) Deputy Director Patricia Campbell of the (real-life) Defense Intelligence Agency in the military/espionage thriller The Brave, which lasted for one season on NBC.^[78] In 2018, she joined the television series Chicago P.D. in a supporting role.^[79]

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.^[80][81]

In 2021, Heche 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.^[82]

Media

During the course of her career, Heche appeared on several magazine covers, including Entertainment Weekly, Mirabella, and Observer Magazine. Heche was chosen by People as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1998.^[83] She became a subject of widespread media interest while dating comedian Ellen DeGeneres.^[84] In 2017, Heche hosted a weekly radio show on SiriusXM with Jason Ellis entitled Love and Heche.^[85] In late 2020, Heche and Heather Duffy Boylston launched a podcast titled Better Together.^[6][86][87]

Personal life

Family of origin

Heche had four older siblings, three of whom have also died. The eldest, Susan (1957–2006), from whom Anne was estranged, died of brain cancer in 2006.^[88] Cynthia died at two months of age in infancy of a heart defect.^[14] The third sibling and only brother, Nathan (1965–1983), died aged 18 in a car crash three months after their father died in 1983. Anne said his death was a suicide, though their mother Nancy disputes this.^[9][17][89] Abigail is the fourth sibling, then followed by Anne.^[90] Anne and her mother, Nancy, were estranged since Anne confronted her about sexual abuse she said she suffered at the hands of her father.^[91]

In her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, Anne wrote that when she contracted genital herpes as an infant, her mother insisted that it was a diaper rash and refused to take her to the doctor.^[92] Nancy Heche was outraged by her daughter’s allegations, responding, “I am trying to find a place for myself in this writing, a place where I as Anne’s mother do not feel violated or scandalized.” She added, “I find no place among the lies and blasphemies in the pages of this book.”^[93]

Her sister Abigail added, “It is my opinion that my sister Anne truly believes, at this moment, what she has asserted about our father’s past behavior; however, at the same time, I would like to point out that Anne, in the past, has expressed doubts herself about the accuracy of such memories.” She said, “Based on my experience and her own expressed doubts, I believe that her memories regarding our father are untrue. And I can state emphatically, regardless of Anne’s beliefs, that the assertion that our mother knew about such behavior is absolutely false.”^[93]

Since her husband’s death from AIDS, Nancy Heche has been a Christian therapist and motivational speaker, who lectures on behalf of James Dobson‘s Focus on the Family about “overcoming homosexuality“.^[31] In 2009, Anne Heche told The New York Times:

My mother’s had a very tragic life. Three of her five children are dead, and her husband is dead. That she is attempting to change gay people into straight people is, in my opinion, a way to keep the pain of the truth out. People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life, and it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love. My mother preaches to this day the opposite of that core of my life. It is no mistake that she still stands up against love. And one wonders why I’m not rushing to have her meet my children.^[31]

In 2011, Anne Heche told The Daily Telegraph that she doubted she would be able to repair her relationship with her mother.^[14]

Relationships

Heche with Ellen DeGeneres in September 1997

Heche with James Tupper in November 2014

Heche’s relationship with Ellen DeGeneres and the events following their breakup became subjects of widespread media interest.^[94][95] The couple started dating in 1997, and at one point, said they would get a civil union if such became legal in Vermont.^[96] They broke up in August 2000.^[97] Heche stated that all of her other romantic relationships were with men.^[14][98]

In 2000, Heche left DeGeneres for Coleman “Coley” Laffoon, a cameraman whom she met the previous year on DeGeneres’s stand-up comedy tour. On September 1, 2001, she and Laffoon married.^[13] They had a son in March 2002.^[99][13] Laffoon filed for divorce in February 2007, after five and a half years of marriage.^[100] The divorce was finalized in March 2009.^{[101][102][103]}

Heche left her husband for Men in Trees co-star James Tupper.^[104] During their relationship, Heche described herself and Tupper as being “eternally engaged.”^[105] She and Tupper had a son in March 2009, her second child and his first.^[106][107] Tupper and Heche separated in 2018.^[108]

Mental health problems

Following her separation from DeGeneres in August 2000, Heche drove from Los Angeles to Cantua Creek in a Toyota SUV.^[109] She was wearing only a bra and shorts at the time, parked the car, and walked 1+¹⁄₂ miles (2.4 km), before reaching a ranch house.^[109] The homeowner, Araceli Campiz, who had seen Heche in a movie, recognized her and let her in.^[109] After drinking a significant amount of water, Heche “took off her Nikes and said she needed to take a shower.”^[109] Campiz assumed that Heche was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but Heche later revealed that she had taken ecstasy.^[11] After taking a shower, Heche entered the living room, asked for a pair of slippers, and suggested that they should watch a movie.^[109] After half an hour, Campiz contacted the Fresno County sheriff’s department.^[109] Heche later told the deputies that she was “God, and was going to take everyone back to heaven in a spaceship.” She was then taken by ambulance to Fresno‘s University Medical Center and admitted to the psychiatric unit, but was released within a few hours.^[109]

Heche stated she was “insane” for the first 31 years of her life, and that this was triggered by being sexually abused by her father during her infancy and childhood.^[110][111] In a series of nationally televised interviews with Barbara Walters, Matt Lauer, and Larry King to promote Call Me Crazy in 2001, Heche stated that she created a fantasy world called the “Fourth Dimension” to make herself feel safe, and had an alter ego who was the daughter of God and half-sister of Jesus Christ named “Celestia”, who had contacts with extraterrestrial life forms.^[93][112] Heche said she recovered from her mental health concerns following the incident in Cantua Creek and had put her alter ego behind her.^[11]

Allegations against Harvey Weinstein

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 Heche and demanded oral sex. The timeframe of the incident was not stated. Heche also stated that she was fired from an unspecified Miramax film in retaliation. She further stated that there were many other sexual harassment incidents that took place over her career and that having survived child sexual abuse had given her the strength to stand up to unwanted advances like Weinstein’s. A spokesman for Weinstein acknowledged his being “friendly” with Heche, but denied all allegations.^[113][114]

Car crash and death

On August 5, 2022, Heche was involved in a sequence of two car crashes in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, first when the Mini Clubman^[115] she was driving hit a garage at an apartment complex, and second when she crashed into a house, resulting in a fire that left her severely burned.^{[116][117][118]} A doorbell video recorded in the moments before the final crash shows Heche’s vehicle rushing along a neighborhood street at a very high speed, followed a few seconds later by the sound of a crash.^[119][120] The vehicle collision and resulting house fire required 59 firefighters to handle, who took 65 minutes to fully extinguish the fire and rescue Heche from the vehicle. The house was left structurally compromised and uninhabitable.^[121] The tenant of the house sustained minor injuries, but her attorney said that she and her pets “almost lost their lives” and that she had lost all of her personal property to the fire.^[122][123]

Law enforcement officials said that Heche was “deemed to be under the influence and acting erratically” at the time of the crashes.^[117] The Los Angeles Police Department said that a preliminary blood analysis confirmed the presence of narcotics in Heche’s system, although more comprehensive toxicology tests that could take weeks are required to identify specific drugs.^[124][125]

Heche was removed from the crash scene on a stretcher,^[120] and was transported to a hospital.^[126] She was filmed sitting up on the stretcher and struggling with paramedics as she was being wheeled into the ambulance; however, she lost consciousness soon afterward.^[120][127] On August 8, a representative for Heche said she was in a coma in critical condition, with medical ventilation required for a pulmonary injury.^[128]

On August 11, the representative said that Heche was not expected to survive due to an anoxic brain injury, and that she was being kept on life support to determine if her organs were viable for donation, in accordance with her expressed wish to be an organ donor.^[129][130] Heche was declared brain dead a few hours later, but remained on life support to assess organ donor viability and locate recipients.^{[131][132][133][134]} Having been declared “brain dead”, Heche was considered legally dead at that time under California law.^{[1][135][136]} On August 14, it was announced that organ recipients had been found and that her body would undergo the organ donation procedure that afternoon.^[137] That evening, her publicist announced that she had been “peacefully taken off life support.” She died at the age of 53 from her injuries.^[3][138] For her organ donation, hospital staff held an honor walk for Heche.^[139]

Filmography

Film