Tragic Details About Anne Heche's Death

Actor Anne Heche has been declared dead following her involvement in a tragic automobile accident, The Guardian confirmed August 12. She was 53 years old.

Heche was seriously injured after crashing her Mini Cooper multiple times in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles in early August. The star first struck the garage of an apartment complex, where video obtained by TMZ appears to show bystanders attempting to help Heche before she reverses her car and speeds away. A second video obtained by the outlet shows the actor racing through a residential neighborhood moments before her car crashes into a home and becomes engulfed in flames. The horrific accident left the "Aftermath" actor in a coma with a "significant pulmonary injury" that required a mechanical ventilator and severe burns requiring "surgical intervention," a representative for Heche told ABC News.

While Heche was in a coma, the LAPD confirmed Heche was under investigation for a felony DUI, as a woman involved in the incident was injured, TMZ reported. Still, the sad and troubling circumstances haven't prevented many fans from remembering her truly impressive body of work.  

Anne Heche was perhaps best known for her roles in films such as "Psycho," "Donnie Brasco," and "Cedar Rapids." However, the beloved star first gained recognition for her appearance on the daytime soap opera "Another World," which won her multiple awards. Notably, Heche's flourishing career included a leading role in the 1997 blockbuster "Volcano," where she starred opposite Tommy Lee Jones, and "Six Days Seven Nights," a romantic comedy that saw her working alongside Hollywood icon Harrison Ford. On selecting roles, Heche told The Action Elite, "If the story is riveting, then it makes me want to turn every page then I have the gift of doing my job really well because I can find the character who fulfills that equally."

Outside of work, Heche was lauded as a trailblazer for her barrier-breaking relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, which helped pave the way for other same-sex relationships in Hollywood. And according to Heche, it came at a cost, saying she was later shunned from Hollywood. "I didn't do a studio picture for 10 years," she told Page Six in 2021. "I was fired from a $10 million picture deal."

After the star split with DeGeneres in 2000, she began a relationship with cameraman Coleman Laffoon, whom she met while working on a documentary about DeGeneres, per The U.S. Sun. The two married and welcomed a son, Homer, in 2002. The couple called it quits in 2007, opening the door for her relationship with James Tupper, aka her co-star in "Men In Trees". The pair share son Atlas, born in 2009, and separated in 2018.