Anne Heche, the actress of “Another World” who won a Daytime Emmy award and gained notoriety in the 1990s for her open relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, has passed away aged 53 years old.
Days after she was hurt in a vehicle accident in Los Angeles, her death was confirmed by her family on Friday. She suffered severe burns and lung damage, and there were signs of cocaine in her system, according to officials.
In her three-decade acting career, Heche earned more than 90 credits and starred in a number of noteworthy projects, starting with the soap opera “Another World.” She portrayed the naughty and lovable twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love, who helped bring the drama of the made-up Midwest town of Bay City to life.
Later, in the 1990s, she made a few significant film appearances alongside actors like Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp. Heche had a number of TV appearances during the past 10 years, including her roles as the deputy superintendent Katherine Brennan in “Chicago P.D.” and the renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Susan Langdon in “Quantico.”
Heche, who was born in Aurora, Ohio, on May 25, 1969, was raised by her homemaker mother and choir director father. The actress experienced tragedy at a young age when, at the age of 13, her father, who was 45 at the time, passed away from AIDS.
She revealed in multiple interviews that she had experienced her father’s violence since she was a young child, which caused her personality to become fragmented and occasionally resulted in bouts of madness. As an adult, she would look back on her upbringing as being traumatic.
Heche left her car in Fresno, California, the day after she and DeGeneres split up, went into a stranger’s home while only wearing shorts and a bra, and rambled on about a spaceship that would take her to heaven. She was then taken to the hospital.
Heche paid homage to the “woman behind the headlines” in her book “Call Me Crazy: A Memoir,” which was released the following year. She emphasised the incredible challenges she had to overcome before being famous and coming out “happy, whole, and strong.”
“The most frustrating thing I learned in my journey is that you cannot teach people to love,” Heche wrote in her memoir. “To love another, you must love yourself, and that is a furious battle that cannot be won until we all agree that we’ve lost it already.”
She is survived by her two sons, one from her marriage to actor Coleman “Coley” Laffoon, whom she divorced in 2009, and the other from a romance with actor James Tupper.