Integrity Score 1615
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Anne Heche was a star dimmed and diminished by the aura of scandal that she couldn't shake. Heche's final days playing out in a spectacle of tabloid interest and ambiguity around her state of mind comes as an eerie echo of various moments throughout her life in public.
Heche was a gifted performer who went from being an Emmy-winning soap star to film stardom in the late 1990s, appearing to be locked and loaded for A-list fame with lead roles in "Volcano" and "Six Days, Seven Nights," a blonde counterpart to Julianne Moore with a bit more jitter underlying her calm. (At the time, one of my favourite performances of hers was as a White House aide in "Wag the Dog," amoral yet poised, and brimming with ideas that could save a doomed president.) And, while she would go on to do other things in film, television, and theatre, Heche's story must contain mention of what ended her soaring career: Heche debuted in 1997, the year of "Volcano" and "Wag the Dog." ,Heche began publicly dating Ellen DeGeneres.
After the pair broke up, heche's mental health made news when she showed up at a stranger's house disoriented. What had been an attempt by Heche to bring people into an understanding of what she went through got reshaped into a half-remembered punchline.
Anne Heche lacked the reserve and restraint that peers who outran her in the industry had learned. There's something sad about that erasure of potential and of humanity. But it also allowed Heche to become something more interesting. Not everyone is built for the sort of sanding-down of personality and humanity it takes to become an everything-to-everyone star.
Anne Heche had a talent for letting the world see what was going on with her characters onscreen. Now she leaves us, once again chased out by dark speculation. It should not be discounted that Heche's last days carry with them collateral damage. Her seeming desire to be understood was a perennial reminder that performers are, that they must be, fallible.