Anne Celeste Heche is an American actress from Aurora, Ohio. She came to recognition portraying twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on the soap opera Another World (1987–1991), which won her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards.
She came to 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 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 Twentieth Century, for which she received a Tony Award nomination.
Aside from her film roles, Heche starred in the comedy-drama television series Men in Trees (2006–08), Hung (2009–11), Save Me (2013), Aftermath (2016), and the military drama television series The Brave (2017).
She lent her voice to the animated television series The Legend of Korra (2014), where she voiced Suyin Beifong, and appeared as a contestant in the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars (2020).
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 Cooper 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.
A video recorded in the moments before the final crash shows Heche’s vehicle driving through a neighborhood street at a very high speed, followed a few seconds later by the sound of a crash.
Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles Fire Department later said that the vehicle collision and resulting house fire required 59 firefighters 65 minutes to extinguish and rescue Heche from the vehicle. The house was left structurally compromised and uninhabitable.
The tenant of the house was not injured but said that she and her pets were almost killed and that she had lost all of her personal property to the fire.
Law enforcement officials told the Los Angeles Times that Heche was “deemed to be under the influence and acting erratically” at the time of the crashes.
Following the crash, police obtained a search warrant for Heche’s blood analysis from the hospital for substances as she is suspected to have been under the influence of alcohol in both crashes.
Heche was removed from the crash scene on a stretcher and was transported to a hospital. On August 8, a representative for Heche said she was in a coma in extremely critical condition, with medical ventilation required for a pulmonary injury.
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 are viable for donation.
