How superstar Ford saved Anne from Hollywood knives.
This week Anne Heche waits to find out if she's still a star. Anne was set to be one of the fastest rising young actresses in Hollywood.Then, last year, she met and fell in love with Ellen DeGeneres, TV's first openly gay leading actress.
And it seemed that Hollywood was not ready to accept that one woman could fall in love with another.
Overnight, the couple, spotted at premieres arm in arm and snuggling up in front of the President, became a gossip columnist's dream and a public relations nightmare.
Anne says: "Until it happened to me, I never believed in love at first sight. What really surprised me was that it was a woman I fell for.
"I was naive, hugely naive - I fell in love, and I actually didn't believe people would care."
But they did - and it could cost the actress her career. During the world premiere of Anne's first big film Volcano company bosses had to the couple sneak out the back door.
"They kind of threatened me with, `Shut up, or you won't have a career'," the actress recalls.
And she was close to losing her role in the comedy Six Days, Seven Nights - out this week - opposite superstar Harrison Ford.
Anne had beaten competition from Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock for the part because bosses reckoned she and Ford had the right kind of on- screen chemistry.
Now they were worried that chemistry was nitro-glycerine - and would blow up in their faces.
And when they heard rumours Anne and Ellen were hoping to have a baby, they nearly hit the roof.
But Harrison Ford sprang to her defence, saying: "I couldn't care less about Ms Heche's sexual identity. I don't judge that to be an issue."
Anne says: "Harrison Ford was great. Everybody thought I was going to lose my career, but he said he didn't want another actress.
"People were worried that because I was dating a woman, audiences wouldn't accept me as Harrison Ford's love interest.
"The same cinemagoers know that Harrison is a happily married man, yet they're going to be willing to accept him making love to a woman other than his wife.
"I had 28 years of practice being straight. I never thought of myself as gay before I met Ellen."
Still, she is worried that her private life may have sabotaged a longed- for career.
Anne began acting as a teenager when her theatre roles helped keep her troubled family afloat.
Her father, Donald Heche, was a choir director in a Baptist church who frequented gay bars at night.
She found out about his double life aged 12, as he lay dying of AIDS.
"My father never came to peace with his sexuality. It destroyed his happiness and our family," she says.
"But it did teach me to tell the truth. Nothing else is worth anything."
As soon as she graduated from high school, Anne accepted a job on a daytime soap, to make money.
After four years, she began to break into feature films in supporting roles. One of these films, A Simple Twist Of Fate, led to a two-year relationship with co- star Steve Martin that the comedian would later call a "torturous love affair".
Later, she won acclaim for her portrayal of Johnny Depp's wife in Donnie Brasco, for helping Tommy Lee Jones save LA in Volcano, and for aiding White House spin doctor Robert De Niro in Wag The Dog.
Now she denies suggestions that Ellen has been a career move to make her headlines news.
"That's brilliant - people saying they're gay to promote their careers," she says, pointing out that with the exception of Force Majeure, scripts have since been hard to come by.
Her coming out has ruined her relationship with her mother. They no longer speak since Anne's "marriage" to Ellen this year.
But Anne has more shocks in store. She has written, directed, and appeared in Stripping For Jesus, a short film about a stripper who writes Bible scriptures on her body.
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| Title Annotation: | Features |
|---|---|
| Author: | Synnot, Siobhan |
| Publication: | Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland) |
| Date: | Jul 3, 1998 |
| Words: | 673 |
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