Sunday 7 August 2022 05:55 AM Anne Heche's father raped her, her brother committed suicide and her mom ... trends now
Troubled actress Anne Heche's life has been beset with pain and heartache, even before her fiery car crash in California on Friday.
On August 5, Heche was involved in multiple car crashes, first slamming into a garage at an apartment building, then careering into a home in her blue Mini Cooper leaving her 'severely burned' and 'intubated' in a Los Angeles hospital.
Before the star was born, her sister, Cynthia, died from a heart defect at two months old. Things steadily went from bad to worse.
Her family constantly moved as their father struggled to provide for the family. Born in Ohio, Heche her transient family would move to southern New Jersey, back to Ohio and finally to Chicago, Ill. during her adolescence.
In 1983, her father, Donald, became one of the first people in the United States to be diagnosed with AIDS, which was how his family came to learn that the Baptist minister and choir director had been living a a secret homosexual life.
According to Heche, her father never admitted to being gay. He died from the disease at the age of 45.
That same year, Heche's 18-year-old brother, Nathan, crashed his car into a tree and was killed. That's just scratching the surface of the actress's tragic life.
The Heche family, left to right, Nancy Heche, Abigail Heche, Nathan Heche, Donald Heche, Anne Heche
In her 2001 memoir, 'Call Me Crazy,' Heche disclosed that her father was a closeted homosexual who sexually molested her and gave her genital herpes. 'He raped me ... he fondled me, he put me on all fours and had sex with me,' she wrote.
Heche also said that she feared for her life as she was worried that her transmitted the disease to her.
'I think my father was a sexual addict. I think he saw everybody as a sexual being. But I think at that time he was living a very flamboyant homosexual lifestyle,' she told Larry King in a 2001 interview. 'You know, at that time there were bath houses where the whole trick was how many can you do a night. You know, there is no question of what he was doing at that time.'
Anne Heche says her relationship with her mother was strained even before the actress went public about her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres
Heche pictured attempting to escape a gurney as firefighters bring her to safety following her fiery crash on August 5
Three months after her father died, Heche's brother, Nathan, was killed in a car crash after apparently falling asleep at the wheel and crashing into a tree. He was 18.
Heche has previously stated her belief her brother committed suicide. The Camden Courier-Post reported that Nathan Heche was traveling along on a wet road when he careered into a tree.
Following her brother and father's death, her mother moved the family to Chicago. In an appearance on 'Hollywood Medium,' Heche said: 'His death is the reason I moved from New Jersey to Chicago.'
Medium Tyler Henry claimed to have connected with Nathan Heche saying: 'He's proud that you've been able to talk about these things and discuss these things, because you're doing it for him too. And he appreciates that.'
Her sister, Susan Bergman published her own memoir about their childhood in 1994 titled 'Anonymity.' Bergman died in 2006 at the age of 48 following a battle with brain cancer.
In the 1990s, even prior to her sister's fame, Susan Bergman, the eldest of the Heche family, wrote a book about their father's secret life as a homosexual
In her book, Bergman spoke about her father's clandestine life. She wrote that the family found out he was a homosexual the same year that he died. Bergman also said that her father was a talented musician but was 'detached from reality,' according to the Chicago Tribune.
Bergman was a well-known writer who lectured at New York University, Northwestern University and the University of Notre Dame.
She told the Tribune that her father was constantly chasing major business deals that often left the family destitute. She said: 'I think I, and my sisters, started looking around for a real father in some ways.'
Heche said in her book that during her 20s, she had romantic affairs with much older men such as comedian Steve Martin and Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsay Buckingham. In her book, Heche wrote about her thoughts of Martin saying: 'Why couldn't my father have been more like him?'
In 2019, Bergman's widower Jud Bergman was killed at 62 alongside his second wife, Mary Miller-Bergman, when the taxi they were traveling in was hit by a drunk driver. During the crash, Bergman was thrown from the car and died instantly.
Heche's has expanded on her sister's portrait of their family life in interviews over the years.
In a 1998 interview, Heche told the Tampa Bay Times: 'We never told the truth in our family _ never told the truth about one thing.'
She went on: 'We were poor, but we said we were rich. We were falling apart, but we said we were good Christians. We had a father who lived a double life, but we pretended that we were absolutely fine. We lived on the streets but said we didn't. Everything we did was a lie. Denial, denial, denial.'
Speaking about her life in Chicago, Heche said: 'My days were spent in school, my afternoons were spent working at Haagen-Dazs and other places and my evenings were spent holding my mother, who kept crying.'
She continued: 'We lived in a one-room apartment. My mom tried to keep it together, but at night she would break down. I didn't cry about their deaths until five years later when I moved out.'
Heche told the Advocate in a November 2001 interview saying: 'My father was a schizophrenic. He lived two complete lives, one as a heterosexual man who directed the choir and had a family and one who went away. We didn't know what he did until years later.'
