US actor Anne Heche taken off life support 9 days after car crash

ACTOR Anne Heche will be pulled off life support nine days after suffering severe injuries in a fiery car crash, a spokesperson Holly Baird said. 

Heche, 53, was declared legally dead two days ago, though she still had a heartbeat, and was on life support to preserve her organs for donation.

On August 5, the Mini Cooper she was driving sped out of control, ploughed into a house, before bursting into flames. 

"Today we lost a bright light, a kind and most joyful soul, a loving mother, and a loyal friend," the family said in a joint statement on Friday.

"Anne will be deeply missed but she lives on through her beautiful sons, her iconic body of work, and her passionate advocacy.

"Her bravery for always standing in her truth, spreading her message of love and acceptance, will continue to have a lasting impact."

Over the course of her career, Heche starred in Donnie Brasco, Six Days Seven Nights and I Know What You Did Last Summer, enjoying a heyday in the 1990s, though in the public eye most of that was overshadowed by being part of a groundbreaking same-sex couple with comedian Ellen DeGeneres.

They were Hollywood's most famous same-sex couple, at a time when that was very rare, oftentimes to the detriment of Heche’s career, like when she came out publicly at the 1997 red carpet premiere for Volcano, with DeGeneres as her date. Their relationship lasted for more than three years.

In an interview in October 2021, Heche said she was "blacklisted" by Hollywood because of her relationship with DeGeneres. 

"I didn't do a studio picture for 10 years. I was fired from a US$10 million (RM44.5 million) picture deal and did not see the light of day in a studio picture."

In 2001, she married cameraman Coleman Laffoon. After their divorce, she began a long-term relationship with actor James Tupper, which ended in 2018.

Anne Celeste Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio on May 25, 1969, the youngest of five children. When she was 13, she was surprised when her father died of AIDS and that he had a double life with secret gay relationships.

Her brother Nathan died three months later in a car crash.

Heche claimed her father raped her as a child, which she cited as the root cause of her mental health struggles, including often thinking that she was from another planet.

"I'm not crazy," Heche told ABC News in 2001 on the release of her book Call Me Crazy: A Memoir.

"But it's a crazy life. I was raised in a crazy family and it took 31 years to get the crazy out of me."

Her mother Nancy denied her claims that she knew about the sexual abuse, calling it "lies and blasphemies" and her sister Abigail has said she believes the "memories regarding our father are untrue." She said that Anne Heche had cast doubt herself on her own memories of that time.

Heche is survived by her two sons, Atlas and Homer.

"My brother Atlas and I lost our Mom," Heche's son Homer Laffoon said in a separate statement.

"Hopefully my mom is free from pain and beginning to explore what I like to imagine as her eternal freedom," he wrote. – The Vibes, August 15, 2022