Bio
Anne Heche is an American actress, director and screenwriter best known to television audiences for playing the lead role of Marin Frist in the drama series Men in Trees, from 2006-2008.
She also starred as Jessica Haxon in the comedy-drama television series Hung, from 2009-2011.
She is more widely known for her work in film, playing notable roles in high profile movies such as Donnie Brasco (1997), Volcano (1997), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Wag the Dog (1997), Six Days Seven Nights (1998), Psycho (1998) and John Q (2002).
Heche was born in Aurora, Ohio to Donald Heche, a Baptist minister and choir director, and Nancy.
In her book, Call Me Crazy, Anne claimed that her father molested her during her childhood, giving her herpes. Her father later disclosed his homosexuality to his family, before dying of AIDS in 1983.
In that same year, Anne's older brother Nate, who was also an actor, was killed in a car accident just a few months before his graduation from high school.
Heche was a noted actress even at Francis W. Parker School, and the soap opera As the World Turns offered her a contract in 1985, when she was 16. However, both she and her mother felt it best that she finish high school first.
Immediately after her high school graduation, she accepted another soap offer and left for New York City. Heche first became famous by playing the dual roles of "Vicky Hudson" and "Marley Love Hudson" on the American soap opera Another World from 1987 to 1991, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award.
Heche has starred in a number of high-profile films, including Donnie Brasco, Volcano, Wag the Dog, Six Days Seven Nights, and Psycho.
She was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the 2004 Broadway revival of Twentieth Century, and also appeared in the play Proof.
She presently is starring in the television drama Men in Trees as a New York City author and relationships expert who relocates to Elmo, Alaska when she discovers her fiance is having an affair.
Before coming out as lesbian, she starred in Wild Side with Joan Chen as her lesbian lover.
In 2007, she was announced as a member of the voice cast for the PG-13 animated feature Superman: Doomsday as Lois Lane, alongside Adam Baldwin as Superman and James Marsters as Lex Luthor.
Heche is also known because of her relationship with comedian Ellen DeGeneres and the events following their breakup. The couple started dating in 1997 shortly after the famous "Puppy Episode" of DeGeneres' eponymous sitcom.
At one point, the two said they would get a civil union if they became legal in Vermont. They also worked on film and TV projects together.
However, the couple split up in August 2000 and Heche soon began dating cameraman Coleman Laffoon, whom she met while he was filming a comedy special for DeGeneres. They married in September 2001 and have a son, Homer Heche Laffoon, born March 2, 2002.
On January 24, 2007, it was confirmed that Heche had split from her husband of five years. Laffoon filed for divorce on February 2, 2007. Sources claim she left her husband for her Men in Trees co-star James Tupper.
A year after her split with DeGeneres, Heche made claims in television interviews and in her autobiography, Call Me Crazy, that she was mentally ill for the first 31 years of her life after being sexually abused by her father.
She also claimed to have an alter ego that was the daughter of God and half-sibling of Jesus named "Celestia," who had contacts with extraterrestrial life forms.
In her book, she explained that before her split with DeGeneres, she was contacted by "God" and told He would walk with her for seven days.
Her mother, Nancy, is a Christian and psychotherapist, who says that she does not believe her late husband sexually abused Anne. Nancy tours the nation speaking with ex-gay groups claiming her prayers cured Anne of her homosexuality.
Anne has denounced her mother for speaking at these events and said her split with DeGeneres was not because of a change in her own sexual orientation.
In an interview with The Advocate following the split, Anne said she does not give a label to her own sexual orientation and said "I have been very clear to everybody that just because I'm getting married does not mean I call myself a straight."
Before dating DeGeneres, Heche dated comedian Steve Martin for two years. She also dated musician Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac for a year in the early 1990s.
She is the subject of Buckingham's barbed song "Come", where he took a number of shots at her lesbianism and delusions, and he wrote "Down on Rodeo" (on the Under the Skin album) with a much softer reflection on the relationship where he can be heard saying "Do you hear me, Annie?" at the end.
In 1998, Heche's sister, Susan Bergman, wrote a book about the family and their relationship with their father. Susan, like Anne, was estranged from her mother.
Heche and Bergman were reportedly estranged after the release of Bergman's book; Bergman died in January 2006 after a lengthy battle with brain cancer.