Background and career
Anne Celeste Heche ( HAYTCH; May 25, 1969 – August 11, 2022) was an American actress, known for her roles across a variety of genres in film, television, and theater. She was the recipient of Daytime Emmy, National Board of Review, and GLAAD Media Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and a Primetime Emmy. Heche began her professional acting career on the NBC soap opera Another World (1987–1991), earning a Daytime Emmy Award for her portrayal of twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love. She made her film debut in 1993 with a small role in The Adventures of Huck Finn. Heche's profile rose in 1997 with appearances in Donnie Brasco, Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Wag the Dog. In 1998, she had starring roles in the romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights, the drama-thriller Return to Paradise and Psycho. From 1999 to 2001, Heche focused on directing, most notably a segment of the HBO television film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). She was nominated for a Tony Award for her starring role in the 2004 Broadway revival of Twentieth Century, as well as a Primetime Emmy Award that same year for her appearance in the television film Gracie's Choice. Other film appearances included Prozac Nation (2001), John Q. (2002), Birth (2004), Spread (2009), Cedar Rapids (2011), Catfight (2016), and My Friend Dahmer (2017). Heche also starred on a number of television series, such as The WB's Everwood (2004–2005), ABC's Men in Trees (2006–2008), and NBC's The Brave (2017–2018). In 2020, she appeared as a contestant on the 29th season of Dancing with the Stars, finishing in 13th place. Events in Heche's personal life often upstaged her acting career. She was in a high-profile relationship with comedian Ellen DeGeneres between 1997 and 2000, with the pair being described by The Advocate as "the first gay supercouple". Immediately following her split from DeGeneres, she suffered a highly publicized psychotic break. In 2001, Heche published a memoir titled Call Me Crazy, in which she alleged extensive sexual abuse by her father. On August 5, 2022, Heche was critically injured in a high-speed car crash. She died from the injuries six days later at a Los Angeles hospital at the age of 53.
Anne Celeste Heche was born on May 25, 1969, in Aurora, Ohio, the youngest of five children of Donald "Don" Joe Heche and Nancy Heche (née Prickett). During her early childhood, the Heche family lived in various towns around Ohio, including suburbs of Cleveland and Akron. Heche's parents were fundamentalist Christians and the family was raised in a deeply religious environment, a situation that she later likened to being "raised in a cult". At the same time, her father led an unstable lifestyle, often changing professions and prone to frequent get-rich-quick schemes, though also with a real gift for music that led to jobs as a choir director in several churches. Heche noted in her memoir that her family changed denominations several times depending on which church her father found work in. Because of Don Heche's often unstable lifestyle and financial situation, the family moved numerous times during her childhood. One of his financial schemes led the family to resettle in the Atlantic City, New Jersey, area in 1977, first in Ventnor City and later Ocean City. One of Anne's first jobs was at a boardwalk hamburger stand, where she would sing songs from Annie to attract customers. The Heche family's precarious financial situation led to the foreclosure of a home her father owned and later their eviction from a rental home. They moved in with a family from their church who offered them a place to live as an act of charity. Anne's mother separated from her father and demanded he leave the household. Her mother and all of the children then took jobs to support the family and be able to live on their own. Anne found work at a dinner theater in Swainton, her first professional acting job, earning $100 a week (about $300 per week in 2022 dollars). Don Heche moved to New York City, where Anne and her sisters would occasionally visit him, noticing his declining health. He claimed it was cancer, when in fact he had developed late-stage AIDS. Although he lived as a gay man in New York, Don kept his sexuality and the nature of his illness from his family. They did not know about his diagnosis and had not even heard of AIDS until coming across an article on the disease in The New York Times about a month before his death. Don died from AIDS-related complications on March 3, 1983, aged 45. In a 1998 interview, Anne reflected that her father being closeted ultimately "destroyed his happiness and our family. But it did teach me to tell the truth. Nothing else is worth anything." Three months after her father's death, Anne's 18-year-old brother Nathan was killed in a car crash when he lost control of his vehicle and struck a tree. The remainder of her immediate family subsequently moved to Chicago to be closer to other family members. Anne, her mother and her older sister Abigail, who had left college, were all living together in a one-bedroom apartment, which lacked privacy and which Anne would compare to living in a dorm room. Heche attended the progressive Francis W. Parker School, where she continued to be active in theater, performing in such plays as Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth and Irwin Shaw's Bury the Dead. When she was aged 16, a talent scout spotted her in a school play and invited her to audition for the daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Heche flew to New York with her mother, auditioned, and was offered a part. She was not able to accept the offer, as it would have entailed moving with her family to New York in the middle of her school year and having her mother leave a new job at a brokerage firm. In her memoir, Heche notes that she really wanted to move out on her own and "escape [her] mother's grasp", but this was not an option while she was still a minor. In 1987, at the end of her senior year, Heche was offered another audition, this time for the soap opera Another World. She was offered a role after two auditions and accepted, in spite of her mother's opposition. She moved to New York City and started work on the series, in her debut television role, just days after her high school graduation. In a later interview she stated, "I did my time with my mom in a one-bedroom, skanky apartment and I was done."
Heche performed on Another World in the dual role of twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love. She continued on the series for nearly four years, from 1987 to 1991. She received several awards for her work on Another World, including a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series in 1991. Heche was unsure about her future as an actress after leaving Another World, having not performed in any other onscreen roles during her time on the soap opera and not having any acting jobs in place at the time she decided to leave. She knew that she did not want to continue in soap operas, something that was considered fairly insignificant in the larger world of professional acting. As a backup plan, she applied to and received an offer of acceptance from Parsons School of Design in New York City. However, right after applying to design school, she was offered a small supporting role in the Hallmark Hall of Fame television film adaptation of the Willa Cather novel O Pioneers!, featuring Jessica Lange. Heche decided to take that offer rather than attend design school and to continue with her career as an actress. Heche received news of her Daytime Emmy Award for Another World while in Nebraska filming O Pioneers!. "Does this mean I'm an actress?" was her response in a telephone call with her agent following the news. The agent suggested that she relocate from New York City to Los Angeles, which she did days after shooting was completed on the film. O Pioneers! would air in February 1992 and was Heche's first TV movie. Her performance garnered some positive critical notice. After completing O Pioneers!, Heche starred in a guest appearance in an episode of Murphy Brown. Though this episode was shot after O Pioneers!, it aired in November 1991 and hence was her primetime television debut and her first screen appearance outside of Another World. After her Murphy Brown appearance, however, she felt that guest spots on television episodes would be detrimental to her long-term career success and mostly avoided TV guest spots until the 2000s. Heche also starred in several roles in Los Angeles theater productions in 1991 and 1992, including "Us & Them", a Generation X slice-of-life piece, and Getting Away With Murder, a stage adaptation of the James M. Cain stories Dead Man and The Baby in the Icebox, which were produced as part of the Mark Taper Forum–sponsored "Sundays at the Itchey Foot" series. In early 1993, Heche made her theatrical film debut in the little-seen independent film An Ambush of Ghosts, directed by Everett Lewis. Soon afterward, she appeared in the Disney film The Adventures of Huck Finn with Elijah Wood. Over the next two years, she performed mainly bit parts in feature films such as A Simple Twist of Fate (1994) and larger supporting roles in cable television movies such as Girls in Prison (1994) and Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long (1995). Heche appeared in her first lead role (albeit receiving third billing) in Donald Cammell's straight-to-video erotic thriller Wild Side (1995), alongside Christopher Walken and Joan Chen. The film gained some notoriety for its inclusion of a very strong lesbian sex scene between Heche and Chen. In 1996, Heche had the starring role as a college student contemplating an abortion in a segment of the HBO anthology film If These Walls Could Talk, co-starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Cher. Also that year, she appeared opposite Catherine Keener portraying childhood best friends in the independent film Walking and Talking. The limited-release film garnered favorable reviews from critics and is number 47 on Entertainment Weekly's "Top 50 Cult Films of All-Time" list. Heche gained positive notice from film critic Alison Macor of The Austin Chronicle, who wrote that she "is destined for larger film roles".
In 1997, Heche starred in what has been described as her breakthrough role in the hit crime drama Donnie Brasco as the wife of the main character, an FBI undercover agent played by Johnny Depp. Critic Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that Heche "does well with what could have been [a] thankless role". By the late 1990s, Heche continued to find recognition and commercial success as she took on supporting roles in three other 1997 high-profile film releases—Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Wag the Dog. The disaster film Volcano, about the formation of a volcano in Los Angeles, had her star with Tommy Lee Jones and Gaby Hoffmann, playing a seismologist. While critical response towards the film was mixed, it grossed US$122 million at the international box office. Heche portrayed the minor role of a backwoods loner in the slasher thriller sleeper hit I Know What You Did Last Summer, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr. Despite her limited screen time in the film, Heche was considered a "standout" by some reviewers, such as Derek Eller of Variety. She obtained the part of a presidential advisor opposite Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman in the political satire Wag the Dog, a role that was originally written for a man. Budgeted at US$15 million, the film made US$64 million. She received the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1997 for her roles in Donnie Brasco and Wag the Dog. Heche's first lead role in a major film came in the 1998 romantic adventure Six Days, Seven Nights, where she appeared opposite Harrison Ford, portraying a New York City journalist who ends up with a pilot (Ford) on a deserted island following a crash landing. She had been cast in the film one day before her same-sex relationship with Ellen DeGeneres went public. Although she was cast in a second starring role shortly thereafter as Vince Vaughn's love interest in the drama Return to Paradise (1998), Heche felt that her relationship with DeGeneres destroyed her prospects as a leading woman. According to Heche, "People said, 'You're not getting a job because you're gay'." She commented: "How could that destroy my career? I still can't wrap my head around it." Six Days, Seven Nights received mixed reviews, but grossed US$74.3 million in North America and US$164.8 million worldwide. On her appearance in the dramatic thriller Return to Paradise, a writer for The New York Times remarked, "as Ms. Heche's formidable Beth Eastern does her best to manipulate the other characters on [costar Joaquin Phoenix's character] behalf, Return to Paradise takes on the abstract weightiness of an ethical debate rather than the visceral urgency of a thriller." Heche starred in Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998), a remake of the 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the updated version, she took on the role originally played by Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, an embezzler who arrives at an old motel run by serial killer Norman Bates (played by Vince Vaughn in their second collaboration). Psycho earned negative reviews, and despite a US$60 million budget it made US$37.1 million worldwide. In an otherwise negative Times review of the film, Janet Maslin felt that Heche was "refreshingly cast in Marion's role", while noting that her portrayal was "almost as demure as Ms. Leigh's, yet she's also more headstrong and flirty." Heche's 1998 films were the only theatrically released films in which she had a leading role. She also starred opposite Ed Harris in the 1999 film, The Third Miracle, directed by Agnieszka Holland.
Heche spent much of the 1998 to 2001 working on film directing projects, often writing her own screenplays. She pulled back from acting roles during this period and had relatively few acting appearances from 1999 to 2001. Her first effort at writing and directing was a 1998 short film titled Stripping for Jesus, which was about an evangelical Christian stripper who writes Bible verses on her body so as to reach clients "in a language that they understand". According to Heche, the film was a metaphor for "my life as I saw it". The film was fully self-financed. Heche starred in the film along with Suzanne Krull and Karen Black. Heche's next several films were made for cable television and featured then-partner Ellen DeGeneres in varying degrees of participation. The first of these (and the one with the widest release) came in 2000, when Heche directed a segment of If These Walls Could Talk 2 for HBO. An anthology film, it consisted of a series of segments about lesbian life in individual years over several decades. In Heche's segment, "2000", DeGeneres and Sharon Stone starred as a contemporary lesbian couple trying to have a baby together via artificial insemination. DeGeneres was also one of the executive producers of the film. In 2001, Heche directed another anthology film segment, this time part of On the Edge, a Showtime anthology of science fiction stories directed by different actresses. Heche's segment, titled Reaching Normal, was her screenplay adaptation of the short story Command Performance by Walter M. Miller Jr. The segment features Andie MacDowell and Paul Rudd in the story of a housewife who enters into a telepathic extramarital affair; the segment includes a cameo appearance by DeGeneres. Heche also directed a documentary that was to be released in 2001, Ellen DeGeneres: American Summer, about DeGeneres' 2000 stand-up comedy tour. The project was never completed. DeGeneres, who financed the documentary, states that she "burned" the film after attempting to salvage the project following the couple's split, but that the memories that it brought back were too painful.
Most of Heche's roles in the early 2000s were in independent films and television; she played the role of Dr. Sterling in the film adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's autobiography about depression, Prozac Nation, with Christina Ricci and Jessica Lange. Premiered at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival, the film received a DVD release in 2005. She appeared as a hospital administrator in the thriller John Q., about a father and husband (Denzel Washington) whose son is diagnosed with an enlarged heart. The production made US$102.2 million at the worldwide box office, despite negative reviews by critics. In 2001, Heche obtained a recurring role in the fourth season of the television series Ally McBeal. In 2002, Heche made her Broadway debut in a production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Proof, in the role of a young woman who has inherited her father's mathematical genius and mental illness. The New York Times found Heche to be "consequential" in her portrayal and compared her to Mary-Louise Parker and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who had previously played the character: "Though Ms. Heche, whose stage experience is limited and who is making her New York stage debut at 33, plays the part with a more appeasing ear and more conventional timing, her take on the character is equally viable. Her Catherine is a case of arrested development, impatient, aggressively indignant, impulsive". In 2004, Heche received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the Lifetime movie Gracie's Choice, as well as a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the CBS television film The Dead Will Tell. In the same year, she performed on Broadway opposite Alec Baldwin in revival of the play Twentieth Century, about a successful and egomaniacal Broadway director (Baldwin), who has transformed a chorus girl (Heche) into a leading lady. For her performance, she was nominated for the 2004 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2004, Heche appeared alongside Nicole Kidman and Cameron Bright in the well-received independent drama Birth. She took on the recurring role on The WB drama Everwood during its 2004–05 season, and then a recurring role on Nip/Tuck as an ex-mob wife and Witness Protection Program subject who requires plastic surgery. Heche continued her television work with Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas film Silver Bells (2005) and in the Lifetime television film Fatal Desire (2006), about an ex-cop, played by Eric Roberts, who meets a woman on an online dating site who attempts to get him to kill her husband.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
