His name may not tell you anything.
But the American actress Anne Heche, in critical condition after a serious car accident, which took place on Friday in Los Angeles, has played in around fifty films and series, alongside the greatest.
The peak of his career was in the late 1990s.
Blonde with a diaphanous face, a slightly hoarse voice, the actress, now 53, has a string of notable roles in feature films like "Donnie Brasco" alongside Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, "Men of Influence with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman, “Volcano” or even “Six Days, Seven Nights” where she replies to Harrison Ford.
Anne Heche and Harrison Ford in "Six Days, Seven Nights" in 1998.
After a slump in the 2000s, which she explains by her coming out and the revelation of her relationship with comedian and presenter Ellen DeGeneres, she had resumed, in recent years, a steady pace of filming.
Anne Heche, born in 1969 in Ontario, had a chaotic childhood.
The family moved according to the assignments of the father, organist and choir director in fundamentalist Baptist churches, who died of AIDS in 1983. She will tell of having been raped by him, until she was twelve years old.
“There was no television, no cinema and I had little access to books, says the actress in an interview on American radio.
Access to culture was very limited”.
Her life changes at the age of fifteen, when a talent scout notices her while she is playing in a high school play.
Blacklisted after coming out
Hollywood opened its doors to him in the early 1990s. The roles in big productions followed one another.
“They said of me that I was like a wild animal freed from its cage, she says in November 2021 on the set of the talk show
The Real
.
I was doing things differently than other people, and that could only attract attention”.
She also admits having refused the main role of "Speed", finally taken over by Sandra Bullock and huge success on the big screen, thinking that the scenario would not work.
Anne Heche in a relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, in 2000. AFP or licensors
Anne Heche claims to have been downright “blacklisted” after revealing her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres in 1997. “I was
canceled
(
erased
), she says during this same interview.
Today, we have come a long way, but at the time, it was not happening.
I was even excluded from the premiere of one of my films, because some did not want me to appear alongside my partner.
Society has evolved.
»
After being nominated for the Emmy Awards for "Gracie's Choice" in 2004, she held her last major role in the film "The Vanished", released directly on VOD in 2021, due to the health crisis, with Jason Patric and Thomas Jane. .
Separated from Ellen DeGeneres since 2000, she has had several companions and is the mother of a thirteen-year-old boy.
