Anne Heche’s Demons Were Far Greater Than We Knew

Now that the media firestorm has settled, we finally know what really happened during Anne Heche’s last moments. Anne Heche was born in May 1969 to Nancy and Donald Joe Heche in small-town Ohio. To everyone else, the Heche family looked like a nice fundamentalist Christian family, but there was something much darker lurking behind their front door. For Anne Heche, the monster in her closet was all too real.

Heche’s childhood was just as scandalous as her headline-grabbing Hollywood career. Her father, Donald Joe, never seemed to have a steady job and was full of failed get-rich-quick schemes that forced the family to move often. But wherever they went, Heche noticed that her father’s demons followed them. They would stalk her for the rest of her life.

Heche’s life of fame and fortune was a long way off. At the height of her success, she recalled a time when “we’d been knocked out of our house and my family was holed up living in a bedroom in the home of a generous family from our church.” As a pre-teen, she took a job waiting tables at a dinner theater just to make ends meet, dreaming of the day she would be on stage.

Tragedy struck Heche’s family when she was just 13 years old. Her father passed away from complications of AIDS. Heche knew exactly how her church choir-directing father contracted the illness, too. In fact, she knew all of his deepest secrets. Years later, on an episode of Larry King Live, Heche spilled the beans. She told the world that her father had been a closeted gay man. She elaborated, “He was a very promiscuous man and we knew his lifestyle.”

Then, when it rains it pours, and it was raining tragedy on the Heche family. Just three short years after Heche’s father passed, her 18-year-old brother met his own untimely demise. In a frightening omen of her own fate, Heche’s brother passed away in a violent car crash.

Heche needed a way to escape her tragically fated family. Fortunately, at 16 years old, a talent scout spotted her on stage during a school play. He whisked her off to New York City, where she auditioned for “As the World Turns.” To even her own surprise, she absolutely nailed it. The end to her suffering was almost in sight, or was it just the beginning?

Just when Heche thought things were looking up, it all came crashing down around her. Her mother told her that she was too young to be on television and made her finish high school. Anne later said, “My mother was very religious and maybe she thought show business was a sinner’s world.”

At 18, Heche was free to make her own decisions. She called up the talent scout and told him, “Send me the ticket, I’m going on the plane.” According to her, “I did my time with my mom in a one-bedroom skanky apartment and I was done.” It would be years before Heche revealed the real reason she was so eager to get away from her mother. Heche broke away from her family and entered Hollywood with a splash. She landed a recurring role on “Another World,” playing identical twins. The rookie actress’s performance was so great that she even snagged an Emmy nomination.

After her success on “Another World,” Heche struggled to find larger roles. That was until 1997’s “Donnie Brasco,” where she starred alongside A-list star Johnny Depp. In fact, she stole the attention away from the megastar. The film’s writer said, “If I had one thing to say, there should have been more Anne Heche in the actual script.”

In her 2001 memoir “Call Me Crazy,” Heche wrote about her experience. Heche said that at the time of filming “Donnie Brasco,” she began hearing the voice of God. As if that wasn’t odd enough, the voice of God was telling her some very interesting things. Heche claimed that the voice of God in her head told her about her alter ego, Celestia. Apparently, God was telling her that she was the physical incarnation of God himself, and because that wasn’t enough, the reincarnation of Jesus as well. Her divine mission was to enlighten all mankind.

Despite her running internal dialogue between Celestia, God, and Jesus, Heche’s career was taking off. In 1998, hot off the heels of her “Donnie Brasco” breakthrough, Heche landed her first headlining role in a major film. She was set to star alongside Harrison Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights.”

Before filming on “Six Days, Seven Nights” began, Touchstone Pictures fired Heche. Oddly enough, it wasn’t because she was running around telling everyone that she was an intergalactic reincarnation of Jesus. The studio axed Heche from the project because she had appeared on the red carpet with Ellen DeGeneres as more than just a friend. The studio believed that Heche’s new lesbian relationship made her unmarketable to audiences. Her co-star vehemently disagreed. Harrison Ford had personally selected Heche for “Six Days, Seven Nights” over Hollywood heavy hitters like Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts. He demanded that the studio hire her back, which they reluctantly did. But it was a little too late. Major studios blacklisted Heche for being half of the world’s first gay super couple.

But they might have judged her too quickly. Heche starred alongside Vince Vaughn in two 1998 films, “Return to Paradise” and “Psycho.” According to sources on either film set, Heche’s love life was even more complicated than the public realized. Even though Heche was officially dating DeGeneres, there was speculation that her passions lay elsewhere, like with the opposite gender. Rumors began spreading that Heche and Vaughn weren’t acting in their love scenes together. In fact, according to their co-stars, Heche and Vaughn were as inseparable as an industrial adhesive. If they were trying to hide a relationship, they weren’t doing a very good job of it. While DeGeneres watched from the tabloids, Heche cozied up with Vaughn, allegedly while filming on set in locations like Thailand and Macau. Heche and Vaughn enjoyed passionate lovemaking sessions in their trailers.

When they returned to New York to finish filming, Heche and Vaughn flaunted the relationship openly. According to reports, they would show up to set holding hands and leave holding more than that. One night, they were dirty dancing at the Redeye Grill. One source said they left wrapped around each other tighter than tape on a package.

Heche’s affair with Vaughn might have been an attempt to cover up her relationship with DeGeneres for the sake of her career. In an interview, Heche confessed, “People said, ‘You’re not getting a job because you’re gay.’ How could that destroy my career? I still can’t wrap my head around it.” In a tell-all interview with Los Angeles magazine, Heche confessed that she wasn’t even certain that she was gay. She said, “I’m a whole different thing. I don’t even know what I am.” Heche might not have known what she was, but she could have said what she wasn’t. She was not in love with DeGeneres, not for much longer. While they were still dating, Heche agreed to direct a documentary about DeGeneres’s stand-up comedy tour. While filming the comedy tour documentary, she fell in love with the film’s cameraman, Coleman Laffoon. In her 2001 memoir, she made a shocking confession. She claimed that she had been insane for her entire life up to that point.

Following her breakdown and career troubles, Heche actually did seem to come back around the corner, but only because she had faced her demons—one in particular. As an adult, Heche strayed from her strict religious upbringing in an effort to heal her childhood traumas. She returned to Reichian body psychotherapy and psychedelic therapy to face the demons of her past. But nothing could have prepared her for the painful memories that came rushing back to her or the wounds that would open up. While discussing her memoir on an episode of Larry King Live, Heche finally revealed that childhood trauma had been driving her crazy all these years. The “Donnie Brasco” actress claimed that her father, Donald Joe, had forced himself on her repeatedly, and she had the evidence to prove it. In another interview promoting her memoir, a journalist from The Advocate asked follow-up questions about her allegations against her father. But why, the reporter asked, would a gay man force himself on a girl? Heche responded, “I don’t think he was just a gay man, I think he was deviant. My belief was that my father was gay and he had to cover that up.”

Heche’s story of her repressed childhood trauma explained much of her strange behavior, including that particularly odd episode at the stranger’s house in the California desert. She explained that to escape her trauma, she had created a fictional world in her head called the fourth dimension. She added that Celestia had been the alter ego who kept her safe from harm. Heche’s shocking revelations in her memoir helped to heal her childhood wounds, but they also destroyed her family. She claimed that her mother refused to believe her accusations against her father. In fact, based on the stories that Heche tells in her memoir, her mother went out of her way to cover up the whole thing.

In her memoir, Heche recounted the time that she presented her mother with the evidence of her father’s predatory behavior: a venereal disease. Instead of taking Heche to the doctor so that she could get treatment, her mother told her that all she had was a bad diaper rash. But diaper rashes don’t usually have oozing sores.

Heche’s evangelical Christian mother fired back at her daughter’s allegations. In a candid internet forum, she wrote, “I’m trying to find a place for myself in this writing, a place where I, as Anne’s mother, do not feel violated or scandalized. I find no place among the lies and blasphemies in the pages of this book.” The mother-daughter duo never reconciled.

Heche’s mother wasn‘t the only one casting doubts on her allegations. In fact, according to Heche’s sister, even the Hollywood star doubted her own recollection. “I would like to point out,” Heche’s sister said, “that Anne in the past has expressed doubts herself about the accuracy of such memories. I believe that her memories regarding our father are untrue.” In the media fallout following Heche’s revelations, her sister further defended their mother from public scrutiny. She went on, “I can state emphatically, regardless of Anne’s belief, that the assertion that our mother knew about such behavior is absolutely false.” But to make peace with herself, Heche had to have the last word.

In an interview with The New York Times, Heche defended her allegations and cast aspersions on her family. She said, “My mother’s had a very tragic life. Three of her five children are deceased and her husband is deceased. 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.” She does have a point. Nancy Heche is a Christian therapist whose focus is on overcoming homosexuality. Heche found another way to process her trauma. She wrote and starred in a short film in which she portrayed an adult entertainer with Bible verses etched on her body. She called the film “a metaphor for my life as I saw it.”

But her story wasn’t over yet. Throughout the 2000s, Heche continued exorcising her demons through storytelling, and it seemed to be working. She married Laffoon and settled into a quiet family life, but her married bliss didn’t last for very long.

Heche met fellow actor James Tupper on the set of the television series “Men in Trees” in 2006. Despite being a light-hearted romantic comedy series, “Men in Trees” spelled doom for two marriages. Shortly after the series began, both Heche and Tupper began divorce proceedings for their ailing marriages, and then Heche’s mental health really fell apart. The “Men in Trees” co-stars wasted absolutely no time breaking off their marriages to start their own relationship together. Heche and Laffoon finalized their divorce in early 2007. Heche had to pay Laffoon over $500,000 for the privilege of leaving him.

Heche raised eyebrows once again in the 2009 film “Spread.” This time, the headline news was about what Heche was doing on camera as opposed to behind it. The film featured numerous heavily intimate scenes between Heche and her co-star Ashton Kutcher, but Heche was well past the point of feeling ashamed of her body.

In an interview on her racy scenes with Kutcher, Heche said, “I certainly can say I’ve gone further in this movie than I ever have before. Why didn’t I do this when I was 22?”

Heche did her best to rehabilitate her career. She appeared in several television shows and frequently starred in small projects alongside her new beau, Tupper. She even made some stage appearances and became a favorite amongst critics in the indie film circuit. While promoting her latest project, “Catfight,” Heche appeared alongside the film’s director Onur Tukel on an episode of Doug Benson’s podcast. Everything started out fine until Heche’s eccentricities got both her and the director booted off the show mid-stream.

Heche’s tumultuous career came to a tragic and unexpected end in early August of 2022. She was driving her Mini Clubman through the streets of Los Angeles. For unknown reasons, Heche drove headlong into someone’s garage. She then promptly reversed and fled the scene. Later that same fateful afternoon, Heche was involved in another hit-and-run situation. She drove her car into a Jaguar, never stopping or slowing down to indicate that she even noticed the powerful impact. Fortunately, the driver of the Jaguar did not sustain any injuries. The same, however, couldn’t be said for Heche. Heche’s out-of-control vehicle next appeared on someone’s doorbell video in a quiet residential street. Heche’s vehicle exited the frame at high speed just before the muffled sound of a terrible crash. Heche had driven her car at full speed into someone’s home, plowing 30 feet into the building and trapping herself inside.

Only moments after crashing into the house, Heche’s car caught fire, and the spreading flames soon engulfed the entire collapsing structure. Firefighters were quick to respond to the fiery scene but initially had no idea that anyone was inside the building, far less a Hollywood star. By the time they got to Heche, it was too late.

It took a team of nearly 60 firefighters a total of 45 minutes to pull Heche from the blazing wreckage. By the time they managed to rescue Heche from the inferno, she had already sustained severe burns to much of her body and other injuries from smoke inhalation.

Once first responders rescued Heche from the blaze, camera footage showed her sitting up on the stretcher and fighting with her rescuing paramedics and against her restraints. Shortly after, she lost consciousness and never regained it.

Nine days after, Heche finally succumbed to her injuries. “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.”

She is survived by her two sons.