Six Definitive Films: The ultimate beginner’s guide to Anne Heche
A cult star of American cinema throughout the 1990s, the American actor Anne Heche first came to prominence on the small screen, appearing in the soap opera Another World, where her talents would be recognised and transferred to Hollywood. Winning a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards for her TV role would put Heche in good stead for her flourishing movie career.
Whilst she would go on to enjoy an impressive career, working with the likes of Gus Van Sant, Ivan Reitman, Mike Newell, Barry Levinson and Jonathan Glazer, Heche’s career was consistently hampered by the struggles in her personal life that emanated from her sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her father.
Tragically recalling this period of her life, she told ABC News: “I think everything I’ve done in all my insanity was to try to get my parents to love me. My father loved movie stars. I decided I needed to become famous to get his love. My mother loved Jesus. That was her thing. So I wanted to become Jesus Christ”.
Struggling through addiction and mental illness throughout her life, Heche still managed to develop a staggering filmography where she would work alongside some of cinema’s greatest minds and acting talent. Celebrating the life of a truly courageous Hollywood icon, let’s take a look back at the six most definitive films from a stunning career.
Anne Heche’s six definitive films:
The Adventures of Huck Finn (Stephen Sommers, 1993)
Plucked from TV stardom, Heche made the move to cinema at the age of 24 where she appeared as Mary Jane Wilks in the Disney movie The Adventures of Huck Finn. Cast alongside the likes of Elijah Wood, Robbie Coltrane, Courtney B. Vance and Ron Perlman, Heche managed to stand out among the stars, proving her worth in the world of TV, and establishing herself on the world stage.
A minor Disney release that would fail to create any real significant buzz, the film was nevertheless a major sign of things to come for both Heche and the later Lord of the Rings star, Wood.
Donnie Brasco (Mike Newell, 1997)
It didn’t take long for Heche to be discovered by the wider world of cinema and TV, appearing in James L. Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything and Milk Money before taking more major supporting roles in 1996s Walking and Talking and the TV movie If These Walls Could Talk where she featured alongside Demi Moore, Sissy Spacek and Cher. Considerably raising her profile as a Hollywood star, Heche would make her most significant step-up in the industry in 1997 when she joined Al Pacino and Johnny Depp in the lead cast of Donnie Brasco.
Playing Depp’s character’s wife in the movie, Heche approaches the role with supreme confidence and unmatched style, challenging Depp and Pacino with a swagger that matches their bravado. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Donnie Brasco represented Heche’s very first critically acclaimed success, signposting a sign of things to come for the flourishing star.
Six Days, Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998)
Heche’s high-profile performance improved her visibility in the wider industry of Hollywood, as she was called up to appear in the disaster movie Volcano, the horror flick I Know What You Did Last Summer and the Robert De Niro comedy Wag the Dog. Despite appearing with major stars in Wag the Dog, her most significant moment of the era came in Six Days, Seven Nights, the actor’s first starring role.
Cast in the film at the very same moment as her relationship with TV star Ellen DeGeneres went public, Heche appeared alongside Harrison Ford in the 1998 movie, and her identity in contemporary culture hit an all-time high.
Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 1998)
Whereas any other actor of a straight sexual preference would have had no issues from moguls in the industry, Heche received much discrimination for her same-sex relationship. According to the actor: “People said, ‘You’re not getting a job because you’re gay,’” and as a tragic result, her career began to run out of steam.
This wasn’t until Heche had enjoyed one more major release, however, starring in Gus Van Sant’s remake of the classic Alfred Hitchcock horror, Psycho. Playing the role of Marion Crane, the victim of antagonist Norman Bates who meets her end near the start of the movie, her character’s story is somewhat comparable to her real-life situation in the limelight at the time.
In Van Sant’s classic tale, the leading lady is surprisingly killed off despite her being built up to be the film’s protagonist. The 1998 film then replaces Heche with Julianne Moore in the lead role, an actor who presumably held a more publicly accepted position in contemporary society.
Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
After the turn of the new millennium, Heche’s fortunes switched, breaking up with her partner in 2000 before taking a new path in the industry that favoured independent films and television. Despite this change, however, Heche found more critical success, receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the Lifetime movie Gracie’s Choice in 2004, as well as a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in the TV film The Dead Will Tell.
A signpost to this new career change came in her supporting role in the peculiar Jonathan Glazer romance Birth, starring Nicole Kidman. A burgeoning British filmmaker who had already made Sexy Beast in 2000 and worked alongside such musicians as Radiohead, Blur and Nick Cave, Glazer was an intriguing creative whom Heche saw great promise in. Her performance as Clara, a family friend of the protagonist, caught in the middle of a curious relationship between a young boy and a widow, the former of which claims to be her deceased husband.
The Best of Enemies (Robin Bissell, 2019)
Anne Heche was never able to reclaim the glory of her time in the ‘90s spotlight, though remained an active actor working in film and television. Remaining a beloved figure of pre-millennium Hollywood in some circles of the industry, Heche’s fame was still realised, making a cameo role in the Will Ferrell comedy The Other Guys in 2010, as well as lending her voice to the celebrated animated series Adventure Time from 2013-2015.
Her modern career peaked, at least in critical terms, in 2019, when she took a supporting role in the Robin Bissell movie, The Best of Enemies, alongside such stars as Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell. Whilst the film was a far cry from her collaborations with Depp and Ford in the ‘90s, Bissell’s film was a reminder of quite why Heche was considered such a powerful actor during her heyday.
Indeed, the film and her later career provided a glimpse into what the actor’s life in Hollywood might have looked like if she had been nurtured as a flourishing movie star rather than blacklisted for her sexual preferences. Heche’s story may be a tragic one, but her fight against adversity, collaborating with some of the most significant stars of new Hollywood, and championing of her own personal tribulations makes her life truly extraordinary.
