Anne Heche’s death ruled an accident by Los Angeles County coroner
The Los Angeles County coroner has officially ruled Anne Heche’s death an accident. According to the coroner’s report, the actor died from smoke inhalation and thermal injuries.
The report also noted that Heche suffered a sternal fracture due to blunt trauma from a vehicular collision.
Anne Heche’s car crash, coma, and death
Anne Heche crashed her car into a home in the Mar Vista neighborhood on August 5, setting both her vehicle and the building on fire. The actor was pulled out of her vehicle and taken to the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital, Los Angeles.
She slipped into a coma after being rescued from the crash site, and she was later described as being in “extreme critical condition” due to a brain injury.
The coroner’s office listed Heche’s date of death as August 11- the day she was declared brain dead at the Grossman Burn Center.
After she was declared legally dead, the actor’s representatives released a statement: “It has long been her choice to donate her organs, and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable.”
On August 14, Heche was peacefully taken off life support. She was 53.
The colorful life of Anne Heche
Born in Aurora, Ohio in 1969, Anne Heche was the youngest in a brood of five.
She had a difficult Christian fundamentalist upbringing, and the family moved often. She said she believed her father, Donald, was a closeted gay man. Donald Heche died of AIDS in 1983.
A few months after her father died, Heche’s brother Nathan was killed in a car crash at the age of 18.
In her 2001 memoir Call Me Crazy, she wrote about her miserable childhood- defined by violation, deprivation, and loss. She carried deep wounds well into her adult life and struggled for decades with mental illness and substance abuse.
Heche dreamed of stardom from an early age, and in later interviews, she wondered if it wasn’t a reaction to her fundamentalist upbringing.
Anne Heche: The actor
Anne Heche launched her acting career on the long-running daytime soap opera Another World. She played twins on the show, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991.
She was clearly talented in her craft, and she starred in big-budget movies after her breakthrough- acting alongside Hollywood heavy-hitters like Johnny Depp (Donnie Brasco), Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman (Wag the Dog), and Harrison Ford (Six Days, Seven Nights).
In the 2000s, Heche focused on making independent movies and TV series.
Anne Heche: Lesbian icon
Anne Heche also became something of a lesbian icon in the late 1990s as a result of her high-profile relationship with comedian and TV host Ellen DeGeneres.
While the relationship with DeGeneres did not last, it paved the way for broader acceptance of same-sex partnerships.
Of Heche’s relationship with DeGeneres, New York Times columnist Trish Bendix noted: “With so few role models and representations of lesbians in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Anne Heche’s relationship with Ellen DeGeneres contributed to her celebrity in a significant way and their relationship ultimately validated lesbian love for both straight and queer people.”
“Her influence on lesbian and bisexual visibility can’t and shouldn’t be erased,” Bendix wrote about Heche.