Anne Heche Dies at 53
by EG
Actress Anne Heche died this week after being taken off life support on Sunday night. She had been critically injured in a car accident ealier this month, and her representative had warned last week that Heche's chances of recovery were gone. Read on for details.
Anne Heche, who starred in such films as Donnie Brasco, Volcano and Wag the Dog and on TV shows including Men in Trees and Hung during a troubled life and career, was taken off life support Sunday night, her rep announced.
Heche, 53, had spent several days in a coma at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills (California) Hospital and Medical Center after her Mini Cooper ran off the road Aug. 5 and smashed into a two-story home in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, causing “structural compromise and erupting in heavy fire,” the L.A. Fire Department said.
She was taken from her vehicle and hospitalized in critical condition, and it took nearly 60 firefighters more than an hour to extinguish the blaze.
Heche suffered burns and a severe anoxic brain injury in the crash. Later, she was determined to be brain dead — legally dead, according to California law — but had been kept on life support so that OneLegacy, an organ procurement organization, could see if she was a match for organ donation, her rep, Holly Baird, said.
“Anne Heche has been peacefully taken off life support,” Baird said Sunday night in a statement.
A statement released Friday on behalf of her family and friends called Heche “a bright light, a kind and most joyful soul, a loving mother and a loyal friend. Anne will be deeply missed, but she lives on through her beautiful sons, her iconic body of work and her passionate advocacy. Her bravery for always standing in her truth, spreading her message of love and acceptance, will continue to have a lasting impact.”
In 1997 alone, Heche stood out as Maggie, the wife of Johnny Depp’s undercover FBI agent, in Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco; as California seismologist Amy Barnes opposite Tommy Lee Jones and Don Cheadle in the disaster film Volcano; as presidential aide Winifred Ames in Barry Levinson’s black comedy Wag the Dog; and as Missy Egan alongside Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the slasher flick I Know What You Did Last Summer.
A year later, Heche continued her hot streak, starring in the Ivan Reitman action adventure Six Days Seven Nights (1998) alongside Harrison Ford; in the romantic drama Return to Paradise (1998) with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix; and as Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho (1998).
She first came to fame as a teenager when she portrayed twins on the NBC soap opera Another World, earning a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.