Anne Heche has died of a brain injury and severe burns after speeding and crashing her car into a home in the residential Mar Vista neighborhood last Friday, Aug 5. The building erupted in flames and Heche was dragged out of the vehicle and rushed to the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles.
The 53-year-old, Emmy Award-winning actress is best known for her roles in 1990s films like Volcano, the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho, Donnie Brasco and Six Days, Seven Nights.
Holly Baird, a spokesperson for Heche’s family, sent NPR a statement Friday afternoon saying: “While Anne is legally dead according to California law, her heart is still beating, and she has not been taken off life support.”
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Baird added an organ procurement company is working to see if the actress is a match for organ donation, and that determination could be made as early as Saturday or as late as next Tuesday.
Heche launched her career playing a pair of good and evil twins on the long-running daytime soap opera Another World, for which she earned a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991.
In the 2000s, Heche focused on making independent movies and TV series. She acted with Nicole Kidman and Cameron Bright in the drama Birth; with Jessica Lange and Christina Ricci in the film adaptation of Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestselling book about depression; and in the comedy Cedar Rapids alongside John C. Reilly and Ed Helms. She also starred in the ABC drama series Men in Trees.
Heche made guest appearances on TV shows like Nip/Tuck and Ally McBeal and starred in a couple of Broadway productions, garnering a Tony Award nomination for her performance in the remount of the 1932 comedy Twentieth Century.
In 2020, Heche launched a weekly lifestyle podcast, Better Together, with friend and co-host Heather Duffy and appeared on Dancing with the Stars.
Heche became a lesbian icon as a result of her highly-visible relationship with comedian and TV host Ellen DeGeneres in the late 1990s.
Heche and DeGeneres were arguably the most famous openly gay couple in Hollywood at a time when being out was far less acceptable than it is today. Heche later claimed the romance took a toll on her career. “I was in a relationship with Ellen DeGeneres for three-and-a-half years and the stigma attached to that relationship was so bad that I was fired from my multimillion-dollar picture deal and I did not work in a studio picture for 10 years,” Heche said in an episode of Dancing with the Stars.
But the relationship paved the way for broader acceptance of single-sex partnerships.
“With so few role models and representations of lesbians in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Anne Heche’s relationship with Ellen DeGeneres contributed to her celebrity in a significant way and their relationship ultimately validated lesbian love for both straight and queer people,” said the Los Angeles-based New York Times columnist Trish Bendix.
Bendix said that while Heche was later in relationships with men — she married Coleman Laffoon in the early 2000s and they had a son together, and was more recently in a relationship with Canadian actor James Tupper with whom she also had a son — “her influence on lesbian and bisexual visibility can’t and shouldn’t be erased.”
In 2000, Fresh Air host Terry Gross interviewed Heche in advance of her directorial debut on the final episode of If These Walls Could Talk 2, a series of three HBO television films exploring the lives of lesbian couples starring DeGeneres and Sharon Stone. In the interview, Heche said she wished she had been more sensitive about other people’s coming out experiences when she and DeGeneres went public with their relationship.
“What I wish I would have known is more of the journey and the struggle of individuals in the gay community or couples in the gay community,” Heche said. “Because I would have couched my enthusiasm with an understanding that this isn’t everybody’s story.”
Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio in 1969, the youngest of five siblings. She was raised in a Christian fundamentalist household.
She had a challenging childhood. The family moved around a lot. She said she believed her father, Donald, was a closeted gay man; he died in 1983 of HIV.
“He just couldn’t seem to settle down into a normal job, which, of course, we found out later, and as I understand it now, was because he had another life,” Heche told Gross on Fresh Air. “He wanted to be with men.”
A few months after her father died, Heche’s brother Nathan was killed in a car crash at the age of 18.
In her 2001 Memoir Call Me Crazy, and in subsequent interviews, Heche said her father abused her sexually as a child, triggering mental health issues which the actress said she carried with her for decades as an adult.
In an interview with the actress for Larry King Live, host Larry King called Heche’s book, “one of the most honest, outspoken, extraordinary autobiographies ever written by anyone in show business.”
“I am left with a deep, wordless sadness,” wrote Heche’s son with Lafoon, Homer, in a statement shared with NPR via Baird. “Hopefully my mom is free from pain and beginning to explore what I like to imagine as her eternal freedom.”
A woman, 29, was given an ultimatum: either hide her pink hair or seek employment elsewhere. Embracing the challenge, she began wearing “terrible wigs” to work and her looks quickly went viral online.
Salma Hayek Pinault is a Mexican-American actress, producer, and director. She rose to fame in the late 1990s with her roles in films like Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn. Hayek has since gone on to star in numerous movies, including Frida, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. However, for a long time, she was blocked from acting in comedy movies, and recently, she explained why.
The actress wasn’t allowed to explore her comedic side because she was “too hot.”
Salma Hayek recently shared with the media that she had been kept from starring in comedies for nearly 2 decades by Hollywood because she was considered ’too hot’ for the genre. Despite appearing in romantic comedies like Fools Rush In and Breaking Up, she struggled to land roles in this genre: “I was typecast for a long time,” she says. “My entire life, I wanted to do comedy and people wouldn’t give me comedies. Not only are you not allowed to be smart, but you were not allowed to be funny in the ’90s.”
Thanks to Adam Sandler, she got her chance.
Salma mentioned that she was unable to get roles in traditional comedies until 2010’s Grown Ups, and that Adam Sandler gave her the opportunity to be funny in the film. However, she also noted that she was already in her forties by that time.
Salma Hayek played the role of Roxanne Chase-Feder in the movie. Roxanne is the wife of Lenny Feder, played by Adam Sandler. She is a caring mother and a supportive wife who helps Lenny navigate the challenges of parenting and adult life. Hayek’s performance in the film was praised for its warmth and humor.
Despite past regrets, Hayek is now happy to be where she is.
After being undermined and limited to certain types of roles for so long, Salma Hayek Pinault was able to let go and see the shallowness of that world. Although she was sad about it at the time, she is now doing every genre and is not focusing on the past. She says that she is now in a place where her appearance is not the only thing appreciated and that she has earned respect from people that really matter, so she feels seen beyond that.
If you are a fan of Salma Hayek just like we are, get a glimpse into her personal life and read about her motherhood, marriage, success story, and her secret to aging gracefully.
Preview photo credit ANGELA WEISS/AFP/East News, From Dusk Till Dawn / Dimension Films and co-producers
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