Anne Heche, the Emmy and Tony-nominated actor with a history of mental health struggles, died Friday of injuries sustained in a high-speed car crash on August 5 that left her in a coma and in "extremely critical condition, " according to her representative. She was 53.
Heche, best known for her breakout role as good and evil twins on the soap opera, Another World, and for such films as Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog, Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking, and Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco, crashed her Mini Cooper into a two-story home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Mar Vista, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported. "Fifty-nine firefighters took 65 minutes to access, confine and fully extinguish the stubborn flames within the heavily damaged structure, and rescue one female adult found within the vehicle, who has been taken to an area hospital by LAFD Paramedics in critical condition, " the LAFD statement said. On August 12, her friends and family released an update about her condition, saying that Heche was "not expected to survive" the crash.
Following the crash, actors took to social media. James Tupper, Heche’s former partner and the father of one of her two children, Atlas, posted his "Thoughts and prayers for this lovely woman, actress, and mother." Alec Baldwin, who appeared with Heche in the thriller The Juror and later on Broadway in the 2004 comedy Twentieth Century, for which Heche was nominated for a Tony, posted on Instagram, "There’s not a lot of women I’ve worked with that are brave in the way that Anne is brave…. She would do anything; she would do anything…she was very original…. I love you, Anne. I love you. I think you’re such a talented person and I hope everything is OK; I hope you come through this."
The 53-year-old was oft open about her mental health and addiction struggles throughout her decades-long career in Hollywood, never afraid to discuss the childhood abuse she said she suffered at the hands of her father or her self-described psychotic break in the early aughts.
But in recent years, Heche also spoke frequently about another important aspect of her legacy: her status as an LGBTQ trailblazer.
At the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar party, Heche locked eyes with Ellen DeGeneres, sparking a love story that would serve many Americans' first exposure to a celebrity lesbian couple. The two women went public with their relationship shortly after that and courted controversy and media frenzy throughout their three-and-a-half years together.
Heche married two men following her relationship with DeGeneres. She and cameraman Coleman Laffoon wed in 2001 and had one son together before filing for divorce in 2007. In 2008, Heche married her "Men in Trees" co-star James Tupper, with whom she had a son. The couple separated in 2018.
"I think that when I was in a same-sex relationship, it was hard for people to separate my message from the person I was with, " she told The Times. "The message of my life has stayed the same. I think I was a wonderful spokeswoman for the right to love."