March 14: 2023: I'm not sure who decided to leave Anne out of the Oscar In Memoriam reel, but I'm sharing this remembrance from the day she died to remind that person that she existed and she had a lot of pain in her life and she caused a lot of pain in her life and those things can all be true.
From Twitter, August 12, 2022, 7:16 a.m.
I woke up this morning to a text from my brother with this news about Anne Heche, who was a year ahead of me in high school.
Anne and I were not friends, but we were both theater kids so our circles overlapped. She was luminously beautiful and enormously talented, even then.
The first time I ever really became aware of Anne at school was onstage: she was the star of our fall play when I was a freshman, and it was kind of A Big Thing among the theater kids because she was only a sophomore and got a lead role (theater kid drama is the best drama, obvi). She played Sabina in "The Skin of Our Teeth," which is a huge and extremely demanding part. SoOT is goofy in a very typical Thornton-Wilder way--it's both a comedy and an allegory, and Sabina has to be funny but also serious since she carries the entire show forward.
I will NEVER FORGET watching Anne in that part. Our school had tons of talented theater kids, but watching Anne onstage was like watching stars orbit around the sun. She was sixteen years old and if you saw her in that show you knew this wasn't just another talented theater kid.
When she graduated she went immediately to "Another World," and so we all became "Another World" fans. (People tend to dismiss soap work but that shit is HARD, and Anne was playing TWINS for god's sake.)
I sort of lost track of her after that. I vaguely remember the Ellen thing, and I know I saw "Six Days Seven Nights" and was very jealous about kissing Harrison Ford. I was, however, very aware when news broke about her mental health and addiction issues, and then the poking into her childhood and family: lots of tragedy and loss and allegations of terrible abuse, none of which was known when we were in school as far as I know.
But I do know what it looks like when someone is in a lot of pain, and from what I could see from public reporting, then and now, Anne was in a lot of pain. That doesn't excuse the choices she made last week and the disaster those choices have caused others, but I knew her when we were both young and her pain makes me sad. I hope her pain is coming to an end, now, and that her family and friends can find some small comfort in that.
It feels like an oversight not to mention that the name of the woman whose house Anne crashed into and destroyed is Lynne Mishele, and there is a GoFundMe to help her rebuild her life. https://gofund.me/86c8b99d
Same day, 1:19 p.m.
I'm now seeing reports that Anne has been taken off life support. May her memory be a blessing.
I believe it was that play that the P&G talent scout saw Anne in & what got her life as a professional actor underway.