Anne Heche Bio

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Anne Heche Pictures

Anne Celeste Heche (pronounced Haysh; born May 25, 1969) is an American actress, director, and screenwriter.

Anne Heche: Early life

Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio, the daughter of Nancy and Donald Heche. Her father was an organist, church founder, Baptist minister, and choir director. In her book, Call Me Crazy, she claimed that her father molested her during her childhood, giving her herpes. Her father later disclosed his homosexuality to his family before dying of AIDS in 1983. In that same year, Heche's older brother Nate, who was also an actor, was killed in a car accident just a few months before his graduation from high school. Heche was a noted actress even at Francis W. Parker School, in Chicago, and the soap opera As the World Turns offered her a contract in 1985, when she was 16. However, both she and her mother felt it best that she finish high school first.

Anne Heche: Career

Immediately after her high school graduation, Heche landed her first major TV role, that of good and evil twins Vicky and Marley on the NBC soap opera Another World. Heche made quite an impression with the complicated dual role, earning Daytime Emmy and Soap Opera Digest Awards. Heche taped her final episode of Another World in 1991 and the following year made a significant TV film debut alongside Jessica Lange in the Golden Globe-nominated adaptation of Willa Cather's O Pioneers. She made her feature debut as Mary Jane Wilks in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1993) and gradually landed larger roles in I'll Do Anything (1994) and TV movies Against the Wall (1994) and Kingfish: A Story of Huey Long (1995), playing Huey Long's mistress.

Her breakthrough role was that of a friend of Demi Moore who falls victim to a hit man in the thriller The Juror (1996). She appeared alongside Moore, Sissy Spacek and Cher in the controversial abortion drama If These Walls Could Talk (1996). She went on to appear in the acclaimed indie Walking and Talking (1996) before appearing opposite Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco (1997), as the wife of an FBI agent whose intensely guarded job as a mafia infiltrator threatens to destroy his own life and family. Heche then teamed with Tommy Lee Jones in the disaster flick Volcano (1997) and continued her rise with a well-reviewed turn as a presidential advisor in the political satire Wag the Dog (1997). She appeared in the horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and starred opposite Harrison Ford in the romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights (1998). In 1999, she starred as Marion Crane opposite Vince Vaughn in the poorly received remake of Psycho (1998). In 1999, she played the skeptical daughter of a woman proposed as a candidate for sainthood in The Third Miracle. Heche wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated HBO movie If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000).

In 2001, Heche released the memoir Call Me Crazy. She had appeared in the Denzel Washington thriller John Q and also played Dr. Sterling in the long-delayed adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's bestseller Prozac Nation (2001). She had a recurring role on the hit show Ally McBeal as the eccentric soulmate of John Cage during the 2000-01 season. Heche starred in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Proof on Broadway. In 2004, Heche received an Emmy nomination for playing a drug-addicted mother who neglects her children in the Lifetime movie Gracie's Choice (2004). She starred alongside Nicole Kidman in the well-received independent film Birth and also appeared in a recurring role on the WB drama Everwood before returning to Broadway, where she was nominated for a Tony Award for a revival of Twentieth Century, starring opposite Alec Baldwin. She then took on a recurring role on Nip/Tuck in 2005 as an ex-mob wife and Witness Protection Program subject who requires plastic surgery. By the next fall, she was headlining her own primetime show, ABC's dramedy Men in Trees where she starred as a transplanted New York author living in small town Alaska, which happens to be abundant with single men and few women. Men in Trees was canceled in May 2008, after a season shortened by the writer's strike. Her most recent film is Spread, a sex comedy co-starring Ashton Kutcher scheduled for release in 2009.

Heche currently stars in HBO's new series "Hung," a dark comedy that centers on a well-endowed but struggling high school basketball coach. Thomas Jane plays the lead character, Ray. Heche plays Ray's ex-wife, who is remarried. The actress replaces Kristin Bauer, who played the role in the pilot.

Anne Heche: Personal life

Anne Heche - Relationships

Heche and Ellen DeGeneres

In the early 1990s, Heche dated both Another World costars Richard Burgi and David Forsyth. She also dated musician Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac for a year in the early 1990s. Some speculate that she is the subject of Buckingham's barbed song "Come." Others speculate that he wrote "Down on Rodeo" on the Under the Skin album about her because he can be heard saying "Do you hear me, Annie?" at the end. Heche dated comedian Steve Martin for two years. She is rumored to be the basis for Heather Graham's character in Bowfinger, although Martin denies it.

Heche's relationship with comedian Ellen DeGeneres and the events following their breakup became subjects of widespread media interest. The couple started dating in 1997 shortly after the famous "Puppy Episode" of DeGeneres' sitcom Ellen. At one point, the two said they would get a civil union if such became legal in Vermont. They also worked on film and TV projects together. They broke up in August 2000.

Shortly after the split, Heche began dating cameraman Coley Laffoon, whom she met while Laffoon was filming a comedy special for DeGeneres. They were married on September 1, 2001. Their son, Homer, was born six months later, on March 2, 2002. The couple formally separated in late January 2007. Laffoon filed for divorce on February 2, 2007. After a long-running court battle over spousal and child support, Heche and Laffoon reached a divorce settlement on March 4, 2009, two years after they separated.

Sources say Heche left her husband for Men in Trees co-star James Tupper. The couple reportedly moved in together in August, 2007. Their son, Atlas Heche Tupper, was born over the weekend of March 7-8, 2009.

Anne Heche - Family

Her mother, Dr. Nancy Heche, is a professional Christian psychotherapist. She has toured the USA as a Christian speaker giving testimony of the impact on her life by her husband's death from AIDS/HIV in 1983, by the sudden "death bed" revelation of his secret adulterous relationship, and by Anne's lesbian relationship. Nancy Heche has described how her spiritual views toward homosexuals have changed. In her recent book, The Truth Comes Out, she describes how prayers and her own personal spiritual awakening coincided with Anne's change from a lesbian relationship.

In 1994, Heche's sister, Susan Bergman, wrote a book about the family and their relationship with their father titled Anonymity. Heche and Bergman were reportedly estranged after the release of Bergman's book; Bergman died in January 2006.

Anne Heche - Psychological problems

On Aug. 19, 2000, Heche knocked on the door of a modest Fresno home. Dazed and scantily clad, Heche said her SUV had broken down, asked to take a shower, and then made herself at home. When the cops arrived a short time later, the actress, who had publicly announced the end of her headline-grabbing three-year relationship with DeGeneres the day before, declared she was God and would take everyone back to heaven in her spaceship. In her 2001 autobiography, "Call Me Crazy," Heche explained that her disoriented Fresno daytrip was the result of mental illness (fueled by Ecstasy) stemming from childhood abuse by her father, which led her to create an alter ego named Celestia, "daughter of God, half-sibling of Christ, and that she was to spread a message of love to this stricken planet before ascending into Heaven".