Anne Heche

Anne Heche built a career around an unusual ability to move between vulnerability, sharp comedy and characters carrying more than they initially revealed. Born in Aurora, Ohio, in 1969, she began acting professionally in dinner theater before moving to New York just after high school to join the daytime drama Another World. Playing twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love gave her an early showcase for that range and earned her a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991. Her film career gathered momentum through the 1990s. After early parts in independent films and studio productions, Heche found wider recognition in 1997 with Donnie Brasco, where she played the wife of Johnny Depp’s undercover FBI agent. That same year brought sharply different supporting roles in Volcano, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Wag the Dog. In 1998, she moved into major leading parts opposite Harrison Ford in Six Days, Seven Nights, Vince Vaughn in Gus Van Sant’s Psycho and Joaquin Phoenix in Return to Paradise. Heche never stayed confined to one corner of the business. She wrote and directed the short film Stripping for Jesus, directed segments of the anthology films If These Walls Could Talk 2 and On the Edge, and worked extensively onstage. Her Broadway performances included Proof and Twentieth Century, with the latter earning her a Tony Award nomination. Television remained a substantial part of her career, from Men in Trees and Hung to Dig, Aftermath and The Brave. Later films continued to make good use of her knack for brittle humor and emotional volatility. Cedar Rapids let her balance mischief with warmth, while Catfight paired her with Sandra Oh for a ferocious, darkly comic rivalry. She also brought an unsettling intensity to My Friend Dahmer as Joyce Dahmer. Across film, television, theater, writing and directing, Heche’s career resisted a simple shape. She could be polished, anxious, funny or abrasive—sometimes within the same performance—and that unpredictability remained one of her strongest qualities until her death in 2022.