Actress Anne Heche is brain dead, her spokesman said Friday, a week after she crashed her car into a Los Angeles home.
“Although Anne is legally dead under California law, her heart is still beating and she has not been taken off life support so that One Legacy can see if she is eligible for organ donation,” said the spokesperson for Heche in a statement to NBC. news
“We have lost a bright light, a kind and joyful soul, a loving mother and a loyal friend,” a statement on behalf of Heche’s family and friends said Friday.
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“Anne will be greatly missed, but lives on through her beautiful children, her iconic work and her passionate advocacy. Her courage to always stand in her truth, to spread her message of love and acceptance, will continue to have a lasting impact.”
On Monday, Heche, 53, was in a coma and in “extreme” condition after suffering an anoxic brain injury, his representative said.
Anne Heche has been declared legally dead after the accident. Credit: AP
Anoxic injuries occur when the brain is cut off from oxygen, causing cell death. Heche was at West Hills Hospital’s Grossman Burn Center.
Heche moved into a home in the Mar Vista community of Los Angeles last Friday. The home was damaged by “intense fire” from the collision, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Image of smoke rising from the house after Anne Heche’s car crashed into it. Credit: NBC Los Angeles
She had drugs in her system and was being investigated for possibly driving under the influence, police said Thursday.
“In preliminary tests, the blood draw revealed the presence of drugs,” Los Angeles police said in a statement.
Police could not “comment at this time on the presence of cocaine, fentanyl or alcohol at this time,” they said Thursday. “That will be determined by the second test.”
“The case is being investigated as a felony DUI traffic collision,” the statement said.
Anne Heche’s car after the “horrific” accident. Credit: NBC Los Angeles
Heche landed her first notable role in the soap opera “Another World,” playing Vicky Hudson and Marley Love in the early 1990s.
Later that decade, films like Donnie Brasco, Volcano, and I Know What You Did Last Summer helped propel his fame in Hollywood and beyond.
His television credits include Chicago PD and Men in Trees.
He met talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in 1997 when Return to Paradise co-star Vince Vaughn introduced them at a restaurant in the Los Angeles area.
Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche in 1997. Credit: Brian K. Diggs/AP
Heche and DeGeneres became romantically involved in a relationship that Heche said was groundbreaking for the time because of the global attention they received as Hollywood stars in a same-sex romance.
“My story is a story that created change in the world, moved the needle forward for equal rights, when I fell in love with Ellen DeGeneres,” he said in a segment taped that year for the show Dancing With the Stars.
Actress Anne Heche is legally dead after a traffic accident in Los Angeles. Credit: AP
When their three-year relationship ended in 2000, Heche was hospitalized after she was found wandering a rural area of Fresno County, Calif., acting disoriented and confused, authorities said.
Heche described his struggles with his mental health in his 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy.
“I wanted to beat everyone else to the punch,” he said of the book in an interview that year with Larry King. “I know what has been written about me in the press. I, although I was never diagnosed as crazy, I went crazy.”
Heche also wrote about his relationship with DeGeneres. He said it was groundbreaking as a high-profile, gay romance, but cost him his career.
Heche said she couldn’t be hired for a role by a major studio for nearly a decade.
He later married Coley Laffoon and the couple had a son together before divorcing. She had another child in 2009 with actor James Tupper, her Men in Trees co-star; they separated
In a family statement earlier this week, Heche was described as someone with a “huge heart” and someone who “touched everyone with her generous spirit.”
“More than her extraordinary talent, she saw spreading kindness and joy as her life’s work, especially moving the needle on accepting those you love,” the statement said. “She will be remembered for her brave honesty and will be greatly missed for her light.”
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