A Fearless LGBTQ Icon: Remembering Anne Heche
Actress Anne Heche unexpectedly passed away at 53 on Sunday, August 14 from sustained injuries after her car crashed into a Los Angeles home and burst into flames on August 5. Despite Heche being brain dead on the 13th, her family requested that she be put on life support for an extra day in order to fulfill Heche’s wish of being an organ donor.
As we send our thoughts and love out to Heche’s family and friends, we remember her legacy as an out-and-proud LGBTQ person, especially during a time when living authentically as a queer person was much more challenging.
In the early months of 1997, the late Anne Heche was in preparation to attend the premiere of her newest film, disaster thriller Volcano, in which she held the starring role next to Tommy Lee Jones. As the day approached, Heche began to speak up about her relationship with recently out Ellen DeGeneres, stating that she wanted to bring her to her film premiere. 20th Century Fox, the production company behind Volcano, insisted otherwise.
“I was told if I took Ellen, I would lose my Fox contract,” Heche said in 2020 during her appearance on Dancing With the Stars.
In an act of protest, Heche continued on to bring DeGeneres to the premiere, only to be escorted out of the film by staff before the film’s end. According to her, she was banned from going to any after parties in fear that there would be a picture of her with a woman published nationally. From then on, Heche’s career began to take on a downward spiral, simply because she stood up for herself and her identity.
Throughout her career, Heche was consistently extremely outspoken about her life and her story. Consequently, much coverage on Heche throughout her career was marked by descriptions of her troubled upbringing, surviving sexual abuse from her father, his substance abuse, and his later passing from AIDS. She even published a memoir in 2001, entitled Call Me Crazy, where she speaks candidly about surviving the harsh ups and downs of her tumultuous life. What truly defined her career was her ability and drive to tell her own story, and not let anyone else tell it for mer.
Before her untimely death, Heche in an interview with MSN has no regrets about her choices to be out and open about her sexuality. Choosing herself over her potential career began as bittersweet, but ultimately led on to her living a life where she could be authentically herself.
“Hell, once you start hiding, well, that’s a path you didn’t want to go down,” she said. “I’ve seen people go down that path, and they may have careers but, Jesus, can they look in the mirror in the morning? I don’t know.”
Anne Heche refused to let Hollywood define her life, and even up until the end of it, Heche remained outspoken about her sexuality, mental health, and upbringing in hopes that she could remain a person others could look up to.
Photo courtesy of Anne Heche on Instagram
