Saturday 13 August 2022 05:01 PM Anne Heche was set to be a Hollywood star before Ellen DeGeneres relationship ... trends now
Fresh off her critically acclaimed films ‘Walking and Talking,’ ‘Wag the Dog’ and ‘Donnie Brasco,’ Anne Heche was set to become Hollywood's next big star - before her doomed relationship with stand-up comedian and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres got her blacklisted from homophobic 1990s Hollywood.
Heche - who died Friday after nearly a week on life support following her fiery car crash in Los Angeles on August 5 - was 28-years-old in 1997, when she was first seen with DeGeneres at the premiere of her disaster flick 'Volcano.'
The two were thrust into the spotlight, becoming tabloid fodder, much to the detriment of the budding actress.
That relationship, Heche would admit to Page Six in 2020, 'changed my life forever.'
She blamed it for causing her career to sputter.
‘The stigma attached to that relationship was so bad … I didn’t do a studio picture for 10 years. I was fired form a $10 million picture deal,’ the Emmy winner said.
The blue-eyed, blonde haired actress from Ohio had signed on to star opposite Harrison Ford in a rom-com and a remake of Gus Van Sant’s ‘Psycho.’
While Ellen expressed her sympathy on Twitter and called it a 'sad day,' the two were at odds with each other after a highly publicized relationship that set their lives on vastly different tracks.
Heche says her public relationship with Ellen was the reason she barely worked in Hollywood after going public with her relationship
Heche lamented the shame attached to her relationship, saying 'the stigma attached to that relationship was so bad … I didn’t do a studio picture for 10 years.'
Heche is seen here in her hit movie 'Six Days Seven Nights' with costar Harrison Ford, the last movie she did before her career flatlined
Heche starred in a remake of 'Psycho' before her career was derailed
The 53-year-old suffered horrific burns during the collision and was recorded being dragged out of the mangled wreck by firefighters after it burst into flames in LA around 11am. She died a week later.
Actress Anne Heche died a week after crashing her Mini into a garage before speeding off and smashing it into an apartment block where it exploded
While same-sex marriages have become the norm in Hollywood, Heche came out at a time where the country was less accepting - a 1996 Gallup poll found only 26% of Americans approved.
Their relationship was one of the only high-profile public displays of homosexuality at the time, and when she asked executives about it they strictly warned her about the consequences.
'I was told if I took Ellen, I would lose my Fox contract,' Heche recalled in a 2020 interview with Page Six.
'I took Ellen to the premiere [anyway] and I was ushered out by security before the movie even ended and was told I was not allowed to go to my own afterparty for fear they would get pictures of me with a woman,' she continued.
She had previously dated legendary comedian Steve Martin for three years and had a year-long fling with Fleetwood Mac singer Lindsey Buckingham, who wrote a song about her.
Heche has ruthlessly called DeGeneres a 'bitch' and implied the talk-show star may have used her television success to ruin her acting career
Heche's last Instagram pictures were taken on the set of Frankie Meets Jack, a movie she was filming with Joey and Andrew Lawrence in Braintree, Massachusetts
Heche has said she had never been with a woman before DeGeneres, but described sleeping with her on the first night they met as 'the best sex I'd ever had.'
The pair became more comfortable in public and were seen holding hands on the red carpet at Heche's movie premieres, but their relationship wasn't as sweet as it seemed, and the late actress admitted the two had different goals in life.
'I broke up with her because her goal was to have a lot of money. Mine was to find love, and hers was, "I want $60 billion,"' Heche said. 'Good, good luck; our forks are never going to meet.'
While she's not quite at $60 billion, the TV star is sitting on mountains of cash as Forbes estimates her to be worth close to $400 million, which Heche skewered her for.
'I hope you like your money because that’s why I broke up with you! Do you like sitting on your piles of cash? Because guess what, it gets you exactly where you are,' she said.
She implied in a 2021 TikTok video that Ellen would control what she wore, and showed a photo of the two at the 1998 Golden Globes with the caption 'Why do I look like a hippie? It's because Ellen didn't want me to dress sexy.'
Heche also ruthlessly called DeGeneres a 'bitch' and implied the talk-show star may have used her subsequent television success to ruin Heche's career.
The actress hosted a podcast before she tragically died called 'Better Together w/ Anne Heche and Heather Duffy,' and her cohost spilled the beans on Ellen's efforts to sabotage her ex.
'We’re finding out information that [Ellen] blocked you in ways that we had no idea,' Duffy said on the show.
'What we’re finding is that show was held over apparently your head, as a tool, that if
