The US actor Anne Heche has died, a week after she was critically injured in a car crash. The news was confirmed by a representative for her family to the US online media outlet TMZ. On Friday afternoon representatives for Heche, 53, confirmed she was “brain dead”, which under California law is the definition of death. It was announced earlier in the day Heche would be taken off of life support. It is understood her heartbeat was being maintained in case appropriate organ donation could take place. The American actress who came to recognition portraying twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on the soap opera Another World (1987–1991), winning her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards.
She came to greater prominence in the late 1990s with roles in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco (1997), the disaster film Volcano (1997), the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), the action comedy film Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), and the drama-thriller film Return to Paradise (1998). Following her portrayal of Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant’s horror remake film Psycho (1998), which earned her a Saturn Award nomination, Heche went on to have roles in many well-received independent films, such as the drama film Birth (2004), the sex comedy film Spread (2009), Cedar Rapids (2011), the drama film Rampart (2011), and the black comedy film Catfight (2016).
She received acclaim for her role in the television film Gracie’s Choice, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, and for her work on Broadway, particularly Twentieth Century, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Heche starred in the comedy drama television series Men in Trees (2006–08), Hung (2009–11), Save Me (2013), Aftermath (2016), and the military drama television series The Brave (2017). Anne has struggled with mental health issues. She was also known for her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres and the events following their breakup became subjects of widespread media interest.
In 2000, Heche reportedly left DeGeneres for Coleman “Coley” Laffoon, a cameraman whom she met the previous year on DeGeneres’s stand-up comedy tour. On September 1, 2001, she and Laffoon married. They divorced on March 4, 2009. She was found to be intoxicated on August 5th when she was involved in a sequence of two car crashes in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, first when the Mini Cooper she was driving hit a garage at an apartment complex, and second when she crashed into a house, resulting in a fire that left her severely burned. She leaves behind two songs – Heche’s eldest son, Homer, 20, released a statement on behalf of himself and his half-brother, Atlas, 13.