Anne Heche legally dead at the age of 53
Anne Heche’s son paid tribute to his mother Friday saying the family had lost “a kind and most joyful soul, a loving mother, and a loyal friend.
Anne Heche has died of a brain injury and severe burns after speeding and crashing her car into a home in the residential Mar Vista neighborhood last Friday, Aug 5. The building erupted in flames and Heche was dragged out of the vehicle and rushed to the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles.
The 53-year-old, Emmy Award-winning actress is best known for her roles in 1990s films like Volcano.
Heche and DeGeneres were arguably the most famous openly gay couple in Hollywood at a time when being out was far less acceptable than it is today. Heche later claimed the romance took a toll on her career. “I was in a relationship with Ellen DeGeneres for three-and-a-half years and the stigma attached to that relationship was so bad that I was fired from my multimillion-dollar picture deal and I did not work in a studio picture for 10 years,” Heche said in an episode of Dancing with the Stars.
But the relationship paved the way for broader acceptance of single-sex partnerships.
Television news video showed the car, badly damaged and burned, being towed out of the home, with a woman sitting up on a stretcher and struggling as firefighters put her in an ambulance.
No other injuries were reported, and no arrests have been made. The woman who lived in the house, who was home at the time of the crash, escaped without injury. The house was red-tagged by the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), meaning it was deemed unsafe for habitation.
