The agony and the ecstasy of Anne Heche: in an exclusive face-to-face interview, Anne Heche answers the tough questions about her battle with insanity, her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, her sudden marriage to Coley Laffoon, the abuse she suffered, and whether she still considers herself a gay activist.

In an exclusive face-to-face interview, Anne Heche answers the tough questions about her battle with insanity,, her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, her sudden marriage to Coley Laffoon, the abuse she steered, and whether she still considers herself a gay activist.

Everybody's dissing Anne Heche, especially after September 11. In one of fate's pranks, Anne told her story to Barbara Walters just days before the terrorist attacks. Now, against our uncertain future, our fascination with Anne and her memoir, Call Me Crazy, seems the very essence of our self-indulgent past. Yet Anne's journey still matters to gays and lesbians. When she fell for Ellen DeGeneres, she jumped into our lives as well, and she made twice the noise on our behalf that most gay women would have.

Many gays and lesbians feel that Anne is now trashing all she told us she believed. She came to fame in the gay movement; now she's talking about being raped by her closeted gay dad? She swore love for a woman; now she claims she was crazy at the time? Anne hotly denies that she means us harm, and she sought this interview to say so. She insists that she can't be held responsible for the prejudices and preconceptions people bring to her statements. Nor, as you'll see, is she free of those burdens herself.

Yet it's her own contradictions, rooted so deep she can't see them, that make Anne a perfect poster girl for America's fractured attitudes toward gays and lesbians. And crazy or not, she advanced our cause. Looking back at that swirl of time from Ellen's "Puppy Episode" to Anne's psychotic episode, we can see how Anne pushed Ellen further into activism than she might ever have gone alone. As a couple Anne and Ellen were brave--give them credit--to the point of recklessness. Whatever else they didn't do, they got us onto center stage and kept us there. We'll never be quite so invisible again.

Some of this stuff we have to talk about is difficult, but please know we're not here to give offense.

Absolutely. I have been looking forward to this interview and a reintroduction, obviously, since I broke up with Ellen, to be able to talk to people.

How do you think the gay community is feeling about you? Do you feel people are angry with you?

I haven't felt that, no. Are people angry with me?

Some are.

Well, sure, anything you do in your life, people are going to be angry at you. People were angry at me when I was in love with Ellen, when I broke up with Steve Martin, when I left the soap opera. When you make choices and you're a public figure, people have reactions.

You were very visible as a gay activist. How has that changed?

When I was with Ellen, I was telling people, "If you come out, it's gonna be better for you." But I honestly don't know that, and I used to say I did. I stood in front of the gay community march in Washington [the Millennium March on Washington in April 2000] and I said, "As a straight woman that I was before I met Ellen, I had so many gay friends, but they never told me. You must tell your straight friends, because then we can help you."

Straight people can help you what?

Help you embrace yourself. Help the rest of the straight community understand you. Help spread the word that everybody should be accepted as equal. In order to come out, you have to embrace yourself. My activism now would be more about, "Go in there with a therapist or a friend or whoever; look inside yourself and say, `Where is the shame? What does it come from? I need to heal it.'" Then I think the steps will naturally follow for you to come out.

You know that some of our readers feel it's very important to the way they're perceived that they didn't make a choice. They've been this way since they were born.

I understand that. I've done my life differently. I chose to be in a gay relationship. Whether you think you were born with it or not, I believe it's empowering to think that every day we make choices, and that's our right as human beings. I own that power.

So how do you identify today?

Call me anything you want--I don't call me anything. The labeling's about what makes you feel comfortable.

You really wrote Call Me Crazy, didn't you? There was no ghostwriter.

No, it was me. Coley was my editor.

It's been a long time coming.

I've been writing this story, I would say, for 31 years. Every single thing I wrote was about abuse. I wrote a play about abuse, movies about abuse. Everything I wrote led up to writing this book.

Let's talk about Ellen. You describe your relationship as a clean sexual connection with somebody who knew who they were sexually--to exorcise some of those bad old things from your father.

I don't think consciously it was that--consciously it was Yippee [laughs]. She's not hiding and I'm not hiding. In that, there was freedom--sexually, mentally, spiritually, on all levels--that I had never experienced.

You said that the first night you made love with her was the best sex you'd ever had.

Hands down.

Why?

I think I was allowed to embrace the masculine side of me for the first time and also enjoy the feminine side of me for the first time. To me, a girl who's into pleasing men her whole life ... it was a great orgasm, it was beautiful, I felt like I was exploring something new, which was awesome. It was not what I always thought it would be, which was touchy-soft love. It was masculine and feminine. It was everything.

When you and Ellen appeared on Larry King Live, he asked if you missed anything about the male.

Oh, God, I think that's so ridiculous. It's so silly that somebody says, "Did you miss a penis?" [With Ellen] I did not want for other women or other men. I'm in a loving relationship with a man right now, and I don't want for other women or other men--because he and I together create a sexual entity that is in and of itself divine, [just as] what Ellen and I did was divine.

When you got together with Ellen, Esquire printed a picture of you as "The one that got away."

That was hysterical. Like I was owned.

Have heterosexual people said to you, "I'm glad we got you back"?

No, but I'm sure that will be said. I also feel the gay community might say, "Oh, she got away." But we don't own each other. I don't belong to the straights now--they didn't get me back.

How soon did you tell Ellen about Celestia? Or did you?

Of course I did, the first week we were together. She tried to break up with me. I had done a movie called Stripping for Jesus, which I had stripped my bank accounts to make. It was a movie about my abuse; so clearly about my abuse that there is something in there where the lead character--which I also play--is handcuffed to the bed in her mother's house. I showed it to Ellen and said, "We're falling in love here, so you need to know my truth." She said, "I think you're crazy."

And what did you say?

I don't know. Something like, "Does this mean we can't continue the relationship?" [Both laugh] After that she said, "Don't ever show the tape to anybody." She threw my tape out.

All the film? Everything you shot?

No, I have all the film.

So you mean your edited version?

Yes. It was the only copy I had. And I agreed! That's part of why I wrote this book. Every single choice I made in every relationship was because I was not ready to be out about who I was. Here I was, in love with a woman who was telling me I'm out of my mind--"Yes, you're right, I am; I'll be quiet."

So you sort of came out of one closet and into another.

Yes, although I never said that I came out when I was in love with Ellen; I always said I went in. I went deeper into my own closet, but that was not the focus. Ellen was on the cover of Time magazine, her coming-out episode was happening. I merged with somebody who, on many spiritual levels, was in the grandiosity of me. Sure, I'll hide that I was abused--look what I get to do! I get to merge with a woman who is talking about love, which is my only message. It was a perfect union.

It must have been disappointing to realize that Ellen too was having a hard time being herself when the show ended. You say she became depressed and thought maybe coming out had been a mistake.

Yes. It's difficult to watch somebody make a decision that you feel is for themselves--and then realize it's not.

What do you mean?

[Pauses] When you are coming out--as I witnessed this journey--you say it's for you. But when everybody says it's not OK, it becomes about that rather than about you. That was a switch I was not prepared for. It disappointed me.

Without you, might Ellen have been more flexible with the network in her fight for her TV show?

Oh, golly, the decisions that Ellen made on her show were between her and her producers. I certainly supported her decisions. I was there to hug her when she got home.

You mention arguments about your work. I got that she was threatened by the idea of you doing love scenes with men.

Yes. I don't even think it was love scenes. I think she was threatened by me meeting men. I felt like I was not trusted. Which was offensive to me. I never, ever gave her reason to believe that she could not trust my love. I brought her to the premiere of Volcano; I went on Oprah; I stood by her side.

The tabloids loved printing rumors about you and your male costars.

I am a monogamous person. And I think the fear that consumed her was not about me. The fear was about a big ghost that's a stow gay women abide by: Do not sleep with straight women.

Because we've learned that if you cross the boundary, it'll come back to bite you. And it did.

But I don't believe that. I broke up with Ellen because our relationship didn't work. God, do not diminish this to "I left her because I was not gay." That makes me so angry because it makes my commitment not truthful!

Anybody who's seen your work knows you're a great actor. Do you see an Oscar in your future?

Oh, golly, I wouldn't turn it down! I love acting. Part of what happened [with Ellen] is that I stopped being many parts of me. This is a pattern in all of my relationships--to gain the trust and love of somebody, I would become what they wanted me to become. [With Ellen] I stopped doing acting roles because I thought, Well, this will prove that I'm worthy of love!

But you said in interviews you weren't getting roles.

Well, it's a combination--there's never just one thing happening. I believe that you get the energy you put out. I was vew fearful of getting a role because I thought I might not be loved by the woman I was with. And so in order to not even be put in that position, I put out the energy of I can't work.

With Six Days, Seven Nights, you had already proved that a woman in a gay relationship could succeed in a heterosexual love story.

I do believe it was more of an energy I had with Hollywood at that time. At the top of my game, I became fearful. But I didn't throw any pity parties for Anne; I channeled my energies someplace else. I loved directing Ellen and Sharon [Stone] in If These Walls Could Talk 2. I wanted my lover to feel safe. And it did make her feel safer. I was writing for her, directing for her. I moved out of L.A. for her.

As you went on tour with Ellen to direct a film on her HBO comedy special, the stress of the relationship was affecting your health. Who did you take your troubles to?

I would not tell anybody. It was Ellen's and my business. As I still believe it is. It was a time of discovering whether or not she and I were right for each other. Truths were being seen on the road--I knew it would be that way, you know?

This is when you met Coley. Did you have a special instinct about him right away?

No. I was interviewing crew for the documentary. In comes a man named Coley Laffoon to interview to be a cameraman. This is how ridiculous and simple this stow is: I asked him if he wanted a sandwich. He said, "Yes, please." I can't tell you how many people would not accept a sandwich from me just because it was me asking. Just because he was in Ellen's and my house. It was a simple reflection of somebody who was not going to change around me.

Someone not too in intimidated to take an ordinary thing?

Or state a simple desire: "Yes! Thank you!" I hired him; we went on the road; we got along. I was consumed by what was happening with Ellen, trying to see if that relationship would survive.

Did you confide in Coley?

No. Coley knew none of what was going on. I was his boss.

You write that at this time you and Ellen were trying to get pregnant. Was that when you realized you couldn't commit to a permanent relationship with her?

No, I was trying to save our relationship with having a baby, as many heterosexual couples do. Talk about a sobering experience--which was in itself a journey, to go, Am I drinking too much here? When you're trying to get pregnant, you want your body to be healthy. I was not doing anything that put a film between me and my relationship. That is quite an eye-opener.

Aside from Ellen, you had a close relationship with her mother, Betty. Do you hope that you'll someday be friends with them again?

[Pauses] Sure, I would like us to be friendly; I think that would be really lovely. I certainly wish them well.

I never had this question about you and Ellen. But some people have. That's the gold digger angle. Some people believe--

That I'm a gold digger? Well, for God's sake, you'd hope I would have picked somebody that had some gold.

I guess people think you did. Ellen has a wonderful momentum in this society. That's a kind of gold, isn't it? Spiritual gold?

The beauty of Ellen was golden to me, yes, the beauty of her. But it had nothing to do with her financial statements, I've always supported myself; I've worked my ass off. Plus, if I'd wanted gold, I could have stayed with Steve.

In Bowfinger, Steve Martin wrote the role of a blond actress who sleeps with every man she thinks can help her career, then jilts them all for a Hollywood power lesbian.

[Pauses] I think people express themselves and their pain in different ways, and I feel that that was Steve's expression of something that he needed. I mean, look at the way he portrayed himself. [Laughs] At least I was pretty.

Predictably, the media is taking the news of your September 1 marriage in a way gays don't appreciate. USA Today's reporting was, like, "Anne Heche commits to heterosexuality, marries cameraman."

How absurd [laughs]. I have been very clear to everybody that just because I'm getting married does not mean I call myself a straight.

If the gay community had hoped for one gesture from you now, it might have been that you wouldn't marry while gay people still can't.

Oh, wow, I never even thought about that!

You never thought about it?

About waiting?. [Pauses] See, then you're not taking into consideration where Coley is coming from. He's a traditional man, and we want to start a family. If I deny him that, I'm denying the relationship I'm in. When Ellen and I took our first vacation, we were on the street, and I went to hold her hand. She said, "I don't do that." I said, "That's interesting--I show affection to the people I'm in love with. If you're not gonna do that, then you're discriminating against me." Do I believe that people of the same sex should be able to get married? Absolutely. But right now, I am in love with a man and I can get married, and that's a lucky place to be.

People might counter, "Then don't say you were married to Ellen, because you weren't."

That's not true! I married Coley under the traditions of how I am allowed to marry him, and I was married for 3 1/2 years to Ellen under the traditions of how I was allowed to marry Ellen. I believe I went through a divorce. My relationship with Ellen is no less significant as a marriage than my relationship to Coley.

I was horrified by the book's descriptions of your sexual abuse by your father. But gay people do have a question: Statistically it's heterosexual men, not gay men, who molest girl children. Since your father never told you he was gay, how do you know he was?

Oh, I could see his behavior. 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. My father was doing things that are attributed to schizophrenia--big [business] deals, delusions of grandeur. Which I also had, so I know there's a lot of connections with the insanity that I had with my father.

But why would a gay man rape a girl?

I don't think he was just a gay man. I think he was sexually deviant My belief was that my father was gay and he had to cover that up. I think he was sexually abusive. I think he was sexually addictive. The more he couldn't be who he was, the more that came out of him in the ways that it did. Of course part of my adoration for Ellen was that she was giving the message to the world that I thought my father always needed: "Be who you are!"

Are you saying he molested you because he was gay but frustrated?

No, no, no, I never say that. I do not blame--in a million years--him being gay on why he molested me.

But do you worry that your book will play into people's misconceptions about abuse?

You can't say that. People have an individual experience in this life. I do not believe that I fell in love with a woman because I was abused. Although I don't think it's a bad reason. [Laughs]

Outside of your recovered memories, your only evidence of having been sexually abused is that you've had herpes since you were very tiny?

Yes. Yes.

Do you have a definite memory--from when it happened--of having sex with your father?

You have to understand that I didn't have any memory until I was 18 years old. When I began remembering my childhood, not only did the abuse come back, my childhood came back.

You said your mother encouraged you to write your book and tell your story. That seems supportive.

I understand that that seems like support to you. My mother has never really been clearly focused on what she's saying, but she did encourage me to write the book, and I was grateful for that.

Is there a chance she's telling the truth when she tells the world that she loves you?

I don't know. If she would tell the world that she loves me, I think we would have a different kind of communication. I did not hear her say that.

You were 13 when your father died. Did you have yourself tested for the AIDS virus?

We all did. We had to.

You went to school every day thinking, Maybe I have AIDS. What did that do to you?

Well, look at me, I went crazy! I didn't talk to anybody about it; I escaped into my fantasy world; I became an actress.

To me that's the great bond between you and the gay community. You grew up with "don't ask, don't tell," and so do we.

[Laughs] "Don't be you, and I won't ask you to be you." It's insane.

Anne, you never say "incest"--why? You say "abuse," but nowhere in the book is the word "incest."

I don't know. It wasn't conscious.

"Abuse" is less specific.

Well, I think it's a better canopy. Coley and I made a definition of "love" and also of "abuse": "Love's the understanding that all human beings deserve to have their needs met with respect and honor and care. Abuse is anything less than that." So maybe that's why. It's not a book about incest--it's about something that is less than love.

Let's talk about Celestia.

I created another entity that was from heaven. Celestia is the reason I believe I survived. She was the consistent love that allowed me to know that I could get to the other side of my abuse.

Which brings us to Fresno. You'd been taking ecstasy when you got there. How much were drugs a part of your life before that?

Very little. I was a person who opened my mind at times through drugs. I took ecstasy the day I was in Fresno to go on a spiritual journey. I was coming to the culmination of a fantasy world that I'd been living in for five, six years.

Did you get up that morning as Celestia and hear, "OK, now it's time to go; your spaceship is coming"?

After I moved out of Ellen's and my house, I was staying at a friend's. I woke up and heard, "You're taking off. Today's your day to leave."

Had you been hearing Celestia and God in the days before?

Major. Also, it was connected to the freedom I felt; I could not be Celestia around Ellen unless I was hiding.

When you were hospitalized in Fresno, did anyone say, "A chemical imbalance runs in your family, and we're going to treat you with ongoing antipsychotics"?

No, thank God. They called it a psychotic break, which I don't know the real definition of. But it was tree that I was breaking off and saying goodbye to the world that brought me here. I knew that I was sane. But I needed to go to a psychiatrist and a doctor and make my friends feel safe that I was sane.

In your book, it seems that you quite suddenly snapped out of your insanity. Your friend and manager at the time, Lauren Lloyd, and her girlfriend, Kathy, said, "We love you; come back," and you did.

It's not snapping out of anything. I had created a fantasy world where I was safe. I realized that the earthly life I created at the same time was now giving me the safety I'd always wanted. So I could integrate both lives.

Since then you've fired Lauren Lloyd as your manager. Since you were so close, what happened?

Lauren's and my business relationship is very separate from our friendship. We parted as manager and client because that relationship didn't work.

So you're still as close as you were when Lauren was instrumental in this coming together for you?

I don't think my relationship with Lauren is something I need to talk about.

OK. Let's talk about your future with Coley. When did you two connect romantically?.

About a month after the breakup. I wanted to get back into the world, go to the theater, go to concerts. I thought, Coley was cool. I'm gonna call Coley. When I called, I could feel his emotion through the phone. I said, "What's wrong, are you crying?" He said, "I've just broken up with my girlfriend." I said, "I know what that's like--why don't I take you out for a drink?." That's how we began.

What does Coley do now?

He is a beautiful documentarian. He's all about the truth. He's the only person I've ever met who truly does not judge. He is a light that allows other people to be who they are, completely.

You told Barbara Walters that Coley feels exactly as you do about not labeling sexuality. Is there by any chance a same-sex connection for him in the past that would help him be so open?

[Pauses] Coley is an open human being. He loves people and he loves individuality. When he meets you, he doesn't meet your sexuality, he meets an individual.

So there's not a same-sex experience in his past that would have left him open to a broader view.

One, that's none of my business or your business to even ask that question, and I think it's completely out of line.

I'm sorry--

This is not an article about Coley.

True. As I said, there's no intention to give offense--

I'm finished with this conversation. This is ridiculous. You have got to be kidding me, after everything I have given you, you are now asking me about my husband's sexuality?. That is flooring to me. I [give you] everything in my honesty, and now you are asking me about my husband's sexuality. Wow. Wow!

Anne--

Do you have any other questions to ask about me? That I have not given you complete and forthright honesty, love, compassion, and support for you, for your magazine, for the gay community, and everything else I stand by, every single thing I have ever said in support and love for this community, and that is why I did this article. I expect respect back.

Anne, there's no intention to offend you or Coley. But you've said yourself, many times, there's no shame in being gay.

There is no shame in being gay! This is an article about me. I put myself on the line with my truth and my sexuality. That is my choice. My choice.

OK, OK.

Ask the questions that I have put myself out to be asked, please.

If your baby should grow up to be gay or lesbian, would that be in any way a difficulty for you?

[Laughs] Of course not. [Yells] Of course not! Hasn't anybody heard anything I've ever said? Of course not, my child is free to love who they want to love! Amazing to think that that would even be asked, with all that I've said, over and over again for years.

Does it bother you if people think you're still crazy?

I named my book Call Me Crazy. I understand that people are going to have opinions about me. Does it bother me? No. I know who I am.

Find more on Anne Heche and Call Me Crazy plus links to related Internet sites at www.advocate.com

RELATED ARTICLE: THE FAMILY RESPONDS

We've heard how Anne Heche feels about her family, but how do they feel about her and her new book?

Whatever we believe about Anne Heche, one thing's for sure: Her childhood was rough, and her father hurt her and her family. Donald Heche died of AIDS complications in 1983--one of the first diagnosed cases in the United States, the family says. Afterward they learned that he'd led a double life: husband and father while at home, gay sexual adventurer during his frequent absences. What's more, his failed business schemes kept the family one step ahead of the creditors. In Call Me Crazy, Anne pictures a family unable to communicate or confront, partly because of their rigid Christian beliefs.

In her 20s, when Anne recovered memories during therapy of being sexually molested by her father, she sought corroboration from her family. Feeling she was not believed or supported, Neche would later break off communications with her mother and sisters.

The day after Anne's Barbara Walters interview, the Heches responded via the Web. Anne's mother, Nancy, says (in part): "I am trying to find a place for myself in this writing, a place where I as Anne's mother do not feel violated or scandalized." Anne's sister Susan Bergman (who published Anonymity, her own childhood memoir, in 1994) objects to the fact that the family was not consulted about the book before publication. Only Abigail Heche directly addresses the incest issue: "It is my opinion that my sister Anne truly believes, at this moment, what she has asserted about our father's past behavior ... [but] based on my experience and her own expressed doubts, I believe that her memories regarding our father are untrue." --A.S.