Anne Heche dead at 53: US actor taken off life support 9 days after fiery car crash

Anne Heche, 53, was take off life support in hospital after fiery car crash in Los Angeles on August 5

Heche starred in the movies ‘Donnie Brasco’, ‘Wag The Dog’ and ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’

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Anne Heche in 2017. She was taken off life support on Sunday, nine days after suffering severe injuries in a fiery car crash. File photo: AP

Published: 3:42am, 15 Aug 2022Updated: 11:58am, 15 Aug 2022

Anne Heche, the Emmy-winning film and television actor whose dramatic Hollywood rise in the 1990s and accomplished career contrasted with personal chapters of turmoil, died of injuries from a fiery car crash. She was 53.

Heche was “peacefully taken off life support,” spokeswoman Holly Baird said in a statement Sunday night.

Heche had been on life support at a Los Angeles burn centre after suffering a “severe anoxic brain injury”, caused by a lack of oxygen, when her car crashed into a home August 5, according to a statement released Thursday by a representative on behalf of her family and friends.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed last Thursday that a blood test showed Heche was under the influence of narcotics when she crashed. Another law enforcement source told The Los Angeles Times that Heche’s initial blood test revealed cocaine in her system.

She was declared brain-dead Friday, but was kept on life support in case her organs could be donated, an assessment that took nine days. In the US, most organ transplants are done after such a determination.

A native of Ohio whose family moved around the country, Heche endured an abusive and tragic childhood, one that helped push her into acting as a way of escaping her own life.