Anne Heche: the tragic life of the actress who died at the age of 53 after crashing her car into a house in Los Angeles

“I’m not crazy. But it’s a crazy life. I grew up in a crazy family and it took me 31 years to get the crazy part of me out.”

This is how actress Anne Heche expressed herself in 2001 in an exclusive interview with journalist Barbara Walters for ABC News in which she spoke openly about the events that marked her childhood and adolescence.

His eldest son, Homer, confirmed this Friday the death of Heche, who on August 5 crashed his vehicle into a house in a residential neighborhood in Los Angeles. The car was engulfed in flames.

The police investigate the causes of the accident.

Meanwhile, many of her acquaintances and followers remember that the actress went through difficult times that were captured in a memoir.

Anne Heche was born in 1969 in Ohio and did not have an easy upbringing.

When he was 13 years old, his father died of AIDS. The actress later recounted in her published memoir of her in 2001, call me crazy (in Spanish, “Call me crazy”), which he had repeatedly raped her when she was a child.

In interviews to promote the book, she said the abuse drove her “insane” for the first 31 years of her life, and that she had created a fantasy world called “fourth dimension“To feel safe.

Three months after her father’s death, the only boy of her siblings was killed in a car accident, an incident she believed to have been a suicide.

After moving to Chicago with her mother and sisters, she was discovered by a talent agent in a school play.

Later distanced himself from his motherwho questioned both the version of his brother’s suicide and that of his father’s sexual abuse.

She became known in the late 1980s for playing twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love in the soap opera Another World (“Another world”). Her roles earned her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards.

Heche acquired greater prominence in the late 1990s playing Maggie in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco with Johnny Depp. He later told interviewer Larry King that it had been “heaven” working with Depp.

She played Amy Barnes, a geologist and seismologist in the disaster movie volcanoalongside Tommy Lee Jones, while in the cult film “I Know What You Did Last Summer” she played Melissa “Missy” Egan.

He also appeared in the action comedy “Six Days Seven Nights” and the dramatic thriller Return to Paradise (translated into Spanish as “Back to Paradise” or “For the Life of a Friend”) before playing Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant’s remake of the classic horror film “Psycho.”

In 1997, having previously only dated men, he began a relationship with the American host and comedian Ellen Degeneres.

The high-profile couple said they would get a civil union if it was available in Vermont, but they parted ways three years later.

Heche later suffered from mental health problems and allegedly battled the consumption of drugs. In one instance, she was hospitalized after parking her car on a California highway and walking into the desert.

On several occasions, Heche stated that Hollywood closed its doors to her because of her lesbian relationship with DeGeneres.

In 2001, Heche married “Coley” Laffoon, a cameraman whom she met on DeGeneres’ stand-up tour, and they had a son, Homer. They divorced almost six years later.

The actress allegedly left her husband for the co-star of Men in Trees James Tupper, with whom she began a relationship, and in 2008 her representative confirmed that the actress was pregnant with her second child, Atlas. The couple separated in 2018.

The new century brought a new direction for the work, with more roles in acclaimed independent films rather than blockbusters.

It was the case of the drama birth (“Reincarnation”), the sex comedy Spread (translated as “An irresistible seducer”, “Lover at home” or “American Playboy”) and Cedar Rapids (“Crazy convention” or “Convention in Cedar Rapids”) from 2011, about a naive insurance agent on a work trip to Iowa that changes his life.

He received a Emmy nomination for her role as Roweena Lawson in the 2004 TV movie Gracie’s Choiceabout a teenage girl trying to raise her siblings alone after her drug-addicted mother is sent to jail.

The same year she was nominated for best actress at the Tony Awards after acting alongside Alec Baldwin in the Broadway play Twentieth Century.

On Friday, August 5, the actress crashed his car into a house in Los Angeles and was engulfed in flames.

Heche was hospitalized and left in a coma. On Thursday night her family reported that she was suffering from “severe anoxic brain injury,” which occurs when her brain is deprived of oxygen, and that she was not expected to survive.

On Friday the 12th, a week after the accident, his death was confirmed. Doctors at West Hills Hospital Grossman Burn Center, where she was admitted, kept her on life support in case any of her organs were viable for donation, as she had wanted.

“Today we lost a bright light, a kind and joyful soul,” his family said Friday.

His son Homer wrote: “My brother Atlas and I lost our mom. After six days of almost unbelievable emotional swings, I am left with deep sadness and speechlessness.”

“I hope my mom is free of pain and begins to explore what I want to imagine as her eternal freedom.

“During these six days thousands of friends, family and fans have let me know that they loved her. I am grateful for their love, as I am for the support of my dad, Coley, and my step-mom Alexi, who continue to be my rock in right now. Rest in peace mom. Love you, Homer.”

Now you can receive notifications from BBC World. Download the new version of our app and activate it so you don’t miss out on our best content.