"I'm not crazy. But it's a crazy life. I grew up in a crazy family and it took me 31 years to get the crazy part of me out."
This is how actress Anne Heche expressed herself in 2001 in an exclusive interview with journalist Barbara Walters for ABC News in which she spoke openly about the events that marked her childhood and adolescence.
Her eldest son, Homer, confirmed on Friday the brain death of Heche, who on August 5 crashed his vehicle into a house in a residential neighborhood in Los Angeles. The car was engulfed in flames.
The actress was disconnected this Sunday from the life support that the doctors maintained in order to facilitate organ donation, as was her wish.
Meanwhile, many of her acquaintances and her followers remember that the actress went through difficult times that were reflected in her memoir.
The youngest of 5 siblings
Anne Heche was born in 1969 in Ohio and did not have an easy upbringing.
When she was 13 years old, her father died of AIDS. The actress later recounted in her 2001 published memoir, Call Me Crazy, that he had repeatedly raped her when she was a child.
In interviews to promote the book she said that her abuse drove her "crazy" for the first 31 years of her life, and that she had created a fantasy world called the "fourth dimension" to feel safe.
Three months after her father's death, her siblings' only son died in a car accident, an incident she considered suicide.
After moving to Chicago with her mother and her sisters, she was discovered by a talent agent in a school play.
She later distanced herself from her mother, who questioned both her version of her brother's suicide and her father's version of sexual abuse.
She became known in the late 1980s for playing the twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on the soap opera Another World ("Another World"). Her roles earned her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards.
Heche came to prominence in the late 1990s playing Maggie in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco opposite Johnny Depp. She later told interviewer Larry King that she had been "heavenly" working with Depp.
She played Amy Barnes, a geologist and seismologist in the disaster film Volcano, opposite Tommy Lee Jones, while in the cult film "I Know What You Did Last Summer" she played Melissa "Missy" Egan.
She also appeared in the action comedy "Six Days and Seven Nights" and in the dramatic thriller Return to Paradise (translated into Spanish as "Regreso al Paraiso" or "Por la vida de un amigo") before playing Marion Crane in the Gus Van Sant's remake of the classic horror film "Psycho".
The couples
In 1997, having previously only dated men, she began a relationship with American host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres.
The high-profile couple said they would get a civil union if it was available in Vermont, but they split three years later.
The same year she was nominated for best actress at the Tony Awards after acting opposite Alec Baldwin in the Broadway play Twentieth Century.
The accident
On Friday, August 5, the actress crashed her car into a house in Los Angeles and was engulfed in flames.
Heche was hospitalized and left in a coma. On Thursday night her family reported that she was suffering from "severe anoxic brain injury," which occurs when her brain is deprived of oxygen, and that she was not expected to survive.
On Friday the 12th, a week after the accident, her brain death was confirmed, something that in California is considered death from a legal point of view.
"Today we lost a bright light, a kind and cheerful soul," her family said Friday.
Her son Homer wrote: "My brother Atlas and I lost our mom. After six days of almost unbelievable emotional changes, I am left with deep sadness and speechlessness."
"I hope my mom is free of pain and begins to explore what I want to imagine as her eternal freedom.
"During these six days thousands of friends, family and fans have let me know that they loved her. I am grateful for their love, as I am for the support of my dad, Coley, and my step-mom Alexi, who continue to be my rock in right now. Rest in peace mom. Love you, Homer."
In that 2001 interview, Heche told Walters, "I wrote this book to say goodbye once and for all to my history of shame and embrace my life choice for love."
"The fact that there are people listening to my story is the icing on the most beautiful cake in the world, I imagine it says: 'Happy freedom, Anne. You made it to the other side.'"
