Anne Heche, the 53-year-old actor who became a Hollywood star in the 1990s, dies from injuries sustained after crashing her car into a Los Angeles home several days earlier. On August 11, 2022, doctors pronounce her brain dead, and Heche’s family decides to honor her wishes as an organ donor.
On August 5, Heche was driving her Mini Cooper through the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles when she lost control and crashed into a house. According to the final toxicology report, Heche had traces of cocaine and cannabis in her system, but investigators found no evidence that she was impaired by either at the time of the crash. It’s not clear what caused the accident, but it sparked a blaze that took 59 firefighters more than an hour to put out.
Heche was badly injured in the crash and fire, suffering thermal burns, a sternum fracture and a head injury that deprived her brain of oxygen. Heche never regained consciousness and was in a coma for nearly a week before her death. The actor’s body remained on life support until August 14 when her organs were collected for donation.
Straight out of high school, Heche became an award-winning soap opera actor on the daytime drama “Another World.” After her breakout Hollywood role in the indie film Walking and Talking (1996), Heche starred alongside Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco (1997), Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro in Wag the Dog (1997) as well as Harrison Ford in the romantic comedy Six Days Seven Nights (1998).
In 1997, Heche found herself at the center of a tabloid firestorm when she and actor Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian couple. Heche claimed she was “blacklisted” from Hollywood for 10 years after the relationship went public.
