Unsinkable Anne
(Showtime Online, Juli 2000)Meeting Anne Heche for the first time, you get a sense of a deliberate, serious, self-empowered woman — someone who has paid her dues and endured intense personal scrutiny. Enter her partner of three years, Ellen DeGeneres, and you get a much softer Heche, a woman in love — even a bit gushy who would probably sacrifice everything to ensure the sanctity of their relationship.
One might say Heche already has made tremendous sacrifices. When she professed her love for the famous comedienne in 1997, Heche's career was about to be catapulted to a new level. With the opening of her anticipated box office hit VOLCANO, and her recent casting as Harrison Ford's leading lady in SIX DAYS SEVEN NIGHTS, Heche caught Hollywood off guard. Her coming out was perceived as a high stakes gamble, especially on a month-old, first time lesbian relationship.
Fast forward three years. Heche's career and personal life have both endured and are going strong. She has not suffered much from industry pragmatism: SIX DAYS grossed close to $200 million worldwide and she continues to be cast in sought-after leading roles in big Hollywood movies, including WAG THE DOG and the remake of PSYCHO. She is also capitalizing on the edgy, highly-touted material cable has to offer and will star in the upcoming Showtime Original Picture ONE KILL.
Another sign of Heche's success and perseverance is her ability to evolve as an artist. Heche recently came to the 2000 Sundance Film Festival (her last visit was for the indie hit WALKING AND TALKING) for the first time as a director, with her short film REACHING NORMAL, which will have its television premiere on Showtime. Starring Andie MacDowell and Paul Rudd, REACHING NORMAL (also written by Heche, based on Walter Miller's short story) explores what happens when we step out of the confinement of our relationships to save them. "The beauty, and what I hope is the reward, is that by going to another place, an outer realm, you can grow in a relationship," explained Heche.
In terms of her own relationship, Heche knows exactly where she's going. "I personally believe it is forever. What I have and want may not be for everyone, but for me it is the ultimate. I feel the more you grow together, the more intense the relationship becomes. Now that I've been in a relationship for a while, I would feel very stilted if I didn't get to continue. It takes constant work to make it new and fresh. Sometimes we fall off the path and don't know how to come back to that person, even though we're deeply in love with them. There are ways."
Always brashly pursuing new experiences, Heche has found a niche in directing. "It really was the most natural thing I have ever done," observed Heche. "I love acting, but I never felt as comfortable and confident as I did walking onto the set and directing, even when I'd never done it before. This is much homier to me than being an actress." DeGeneres agreed, "She would get crazy the night before she started filming as an actress. I couldn't believe how calm and prepared she was as a director. I mean, Anne is such a visual person, it makes so much sense. She is an amazing actress and everyone knows that, but it is such a pleasant surprise to see her work in this capacity as well." Heche noted, "It doesn't hurt having worked with the likes of Barry Levinson and Gus Van Sant and drawing from their directorial greatness either."
As skilled a director as she is becoming, Heche is not ready to abandon her acting roots. Her upcoming role as a Marine captain who must defend her life, and then her innocence, when she is attacked by a war hero Major in ONE KILL, was an incredibly satisfying experience for Heche. "I thought the story was fantastic, and as an advocate for women's rights, I couldn't resist the role. This woman had to stand on her own to protect herself and her family because of the 'man's world' of the Marine Corps. I learned so much from doing this. It goes along the lines of doing movies which have a message, hopefully reaching people and opening hearts a bit." Heche didn't mind having the opportunity to work with co-star Sam Shepherd either, "It was a blast, I've always admired his talent," shared Heche.
Along with acting and directing, Heche continues to be a role model for many people who are coming out. She attributes most of the progress to Ellen and her show, but DeGeneres doesn't let her get off so easy. "Anne had a huge part in the significance of what happened. While other well known people like K.D. (Lang), Melissa (Etheridge) and Martina (Navratilova) have come out, it is different when you put out an image of two people who are proud and holding hands," effused DeGeneres. "If I didn't have that love, if I didn't have a partner who was as open and willing as Anne to show that love, I'm not sure it would have worked. And now, it isn't so weird to see a picture of two people of the same sex together, like that guy who got to hug his boyfriend onstage when he won on TV's WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE — in front of millions of viewers!"
Heche is honored to be in a position to help people feel safe in this world. "I realized something very clear. I am fortunate to be recognizable enough that I become an advocate for gay rights just by being. That, and standing by Ellen's side, is the most glorious position I could be in."
Anne and Ellen: The Party´s Over
By Roger Friedman
(Foxnews.com, 22. August 00)Whether you liked them or not (and I did, frankly), you have to admit that Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche changed the world. Before them, no Hollywood stars would have ever admitted their same-sex relationship. It took cojones, as they say.
I feel a little proprietary about them I guess because I was there, I mean physically there, when the two set eyes on each other at the 1997 Vanity Fair/Mortons Oscar party. Also there was Ellen´s then-manager Arthur Imperato, as well as actor Vince Vaughn. Introductions were made and within seconds the two women were thick as thieves. It was history in the making.
Monday came reports that Anne had wandered up to someone´s house near Fresno, Calif., after her car broke down. She reportedly said some strange things and was subsequently detained by the police and hospitalized. I don´t know if a Breathalyzer test was administered.
Poor Anne – she was supposed to be on the Canadian set of her new movie, John Q, directed by Nick Cassavetes. Despite the fact that her publicist insisted she was there or on her way, the fact is she was not there Monday. The people on the set had been waiting for her and didn´t know what happened.
In the movie, ironically, Anne plays a hospital administrator. If we wanted to be funny, we could say she was doing some character research up there in Fresno.
Ellen DeGeneres will go on quite nicely from here – her turn in EdTV was excellent and her recent HBO special was a riot. She´s returned to comedy. And Anne Heche – who was sizzling in bad movies like The Juror and dead-on in good movies like Wag the Dog – will try and reclaim some status as a female lead in heterosexual stories. My guess: she´ll do it.
The public has a short memory. (For example: the whole Democratic convention was about „character“, a party was held on the set of NBC´s The West Wing, and no one even mentioned that show´s star, Rob Lowe, and his sex scandal at a previous Democratic convention in Atlanta.)
Anne of 1,000 days
By Chrissy Iley
(The Globe and Mail, 26. August 2000)Her father was a closet homosexual who died from AIDS. Her mother doesn't speak to her. Hollywood scolds and the media scoffs, but Anne Heche endures. Now, her love affair with Ellen DeGeneres - the one that was supposed to last forever - is over after just three years, and the question is, will Heche keep her head?
Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres split up, they say amicably. But how amicable can a split be that sees Heche wandering around the country roads of Fresno County after abandoning her vehicle. Knocking on a complete stranger's door. Ending up asking to watch a Harrison Ford movie, and could they both put on their slippers.
The next day, a Sunday, an unnamed hospital official quotes the film actress as arriving for treatment in "an altered mind state." There's mention of ecstasy. Later that night Heche arrives in Toronto with little or no luggage, looking forlorn. A sales clerk at a Holt Renfrew store where Heche was spotted said she appeared pale.
The producer of her new movie, John Q, with Denzel Washington, which Heche will be filming in Toronto over the next 10 weeks, brushes aside media gossip by saying she's suffered sunstroke.
Sunstroke? Yeah, what Anne Heche is suffering is more likely lovestroke.
The fact that she is no longer with comedian DeGeneres is shattering. And not just for her. Their very existence proved that gay women could live, love, be taken seriously and sexily. They had been adopted as a hugely political symbol. Perhaps it was too heavy a mantel for the couple to bear; certainly it hid why they were together, because there was a coup de foudre and they fell for each other completely. You could see it in their eyes, burning for each other. They made me feel that true love could exist. Now that they've split, I worry that perhaps it doesn't.
I met Anne at a pizza parlour in Hancock Park, L.A., just over the road from where they used to live, shortly after the couple revealed their relationship to the public. The area is picture perfect, picket-fenced, and she showed up in a shiny black mack, a destroyed grey T-shirt and a thin silk mop of hair that looked like it had been cut with a knife and fork. Her eyes more demanding than pleading, too fired up to ever remember vulnerable; intense eyes that get straight in there.
She hides nothing. There's no politely sliding into the plugging of her latest flick. It's all truth and soul. Within five minutes, we were back in that crowded room at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, where Heche , 31, met DeGeneres, 43, 3½ years ago and the whole room went blurry. She called it a fairy tale. It sounded more fevered than that.
Anne Heche, upcoming movie star -- straight girl -- meets the woman who is about to become America's first all-out sitcom gay. DeGenerous had just decided to turn her life inside out. Heche has always been a character who wanted to display her insides on the out, however gory. Together they were about to throw themselves into their own vortex, the repercussions of which changed their world. More than that, it shifted the pendulum as far as gay acceptability is concerned.
"We were drawn to each other like a magnetic force. It was obscene," says Heche. We started pretty much to say, 'I think you're great,' at the same time.' We were connected that whole night. We went through me trying to get her phone number and her being 'Listen. I don't want to do this with a straight girl.' And I was like, 'Oh. A straight girl. I guess that's what I am. But I'm willing to be something else.' It was a chemical change. Completely, my entire body changed in her presence. My energy changed. We felt like we were floating. It was amazing. I went home with her that night. We were done. We've been inseparable ever since."
Over their three years, the National Enquirer reported several times that they planned on making a baby. And the segment of the movie Heche directed for HBO, If These Walls Could Talk, where DeGeneres played opposite Sharon Stone, about a lesbian couple trying to get pregnant, was said to be autobiographical. They exchanged rings and other intimate items and it came as no surprise by the time they did Oprah and Diane Sawyer and just about every other talk show, that they planned to marry.
"A producer friend of ours said, 'Everyone was speculating when they saw the picture of the two, but when I looked, I always saw a picture where you were celebrating and it made me think why would women ever want to be with men?' But it's not really about that she's a woman. You have to be attracted, which was always the thing which was missing for me. But with her, there are no missing parts."
All of this is particularly amazing since Heche had never had the remotest kind of sexual interest in a woman before DeGeneres.
Her longest affair till then was two years with comedian Steve Martin, 25 years Heche's elder.
She says that it wasn't until the moment she met DeGeneres she learned that the story is between your ears, not between your legs.
It was in fact DeGeneres who had all the doubts. "So many people couldn't believe that it was true, that I really was in love," says DeGeneres. "But it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was true and I was going to be with her forever. I knew this from day one. That night I told her." (Can you imagine a woman telling a man that and how far they'd run?)
DeGeneres was about to do her coming-out episode, and she was leary that Heche was just in it for the experiment. "She didn't want to be an experiment, says Heche. "I said, 'Listen. I've never had sex with a woman before. But other than that I think we could have a pretty great relationship.' Then we kissed and the rest is history. Four days after we were together Ellen said, 'This is going really fast. I don't know what to do. I need some time.' I said, 'Go and take it. You have one chance to leave. This isn't going to happen again. You can leave, but after that, you can never leave again.' She stayed. That's the risk I had to take. I didn't want her coming halfway."
There was talk of marriage. Just after that, Heche won the biggest role of her screen career, romantic lead with Harrison Ford in Six Days Seven Nights. Who would have thought a few years later she'd be walking into a complete strangers's home asking if they had that video?
Heche celebrated that role by taking Ellen to the premiere of her action movie, Volcano, in 1997. First public date and suitable media eruption. Heche's agent and manager had tried to forbid public consumption fearing the biggest role of her career would be withdrawn. She fired both, and retained her role in the movie. "Sexually it was beyond anything I'd ever known," gushed Heche. "I was on a high from having fallen in love. So when my agent and manager asked me to cover it up, they were fired. Who could imagine that being famous is more important than being in love?"
In April, Heche spent a heady week, first meeting Bill Clinton at the White House Correspondents' dinner and introducing Ellen as her wife, then taping an Oprah Winfrey show.
Cynics said that the affair wasn't real, it was one big publicity stunt. I think time proved them wrong. But the publicity that shrouded them was probably the last thing they needed.
Prior to these shenanigans, Heche had been stealthily creating a buzzy little career of her own, garnering critical praise for her performances in the indie romantic comedy Walking and Talking, and particularly Donnie Brasco, where she played the long-suffering Johnny Depp's wife. And more recently Wag the Dog, as presidential aide with Dustin Hoffman. She seemed so blonde, so hetero. This must be a move, a manipulation for attention. If it had been a movie, it would have been a very bad one.
Heche was fierce and laser-like direct when we spoke. She seemed afraid of nothing, as if she'd never known fear. But it was in fact because she's known it intimately and come through the other side of it. This loss with Ellen has probably had her whole life flashing in front of her.
Her childhood is one of the most traumatic and ugly that I've ever heard about. She was born 31 years ago in Aurora, Ohio, had moved 11 times before the age of 12, always on the run. Her father, Donald, a financially floundering fundamentalist and church organist died of AIDS in 1983, at which time Heche, her mother, and two sisters and a brother were living in Ocean City, N.J., in very diminished circumstances. Her father had lied all his life about his sexuality. This she feels influenced everything she is.
"At the time he died, he lived in New York. We would go and see him sometimes, but we never really knew what was going on because he didn't tell the truth about anything. He got married when he was 19. I'm sure he knew he was gay, and maybe tried to suppress his feelings because he was afraid. That's where disease comes from. That's why
my dad just killed himself."Her mother and sisters had not come to terms with their father's sexuality when Heche outed herself. "No. They can't handle it. Unfortunately my mother blames our family's situation on my father being gay rather than the fact that my father couldn't tell the truth. She's attached what happened to us when we were growing up to his being gay rather than his lying. It's his lying that created the problems. It was just pathetic. We never talked about it. Our life just kept getting shittier and shittier. We had no money and nobody ever talked about it. At one point, we came home and our house was boarded up. We were out on the streets.
Heche, as the youngest daughter, stayed at home looking after her mother until she was 17, working many jobs including selling Haagen-Dazs and doing dinner theatre to take care of the family.
Three months after her father died, her brother, Nathan, was killed in a car crash. "He was a wild cat and he was my buddy. After he died I couldn't get involved in the dramas of other people's life because I had a perspective that said how bad could it be? How bad could it hurt? Might as well try it. Also, up until 10 years ago, it was like, what's it going to do? Kill me? I hope so."
Her mother never accepted the love affair with Ellen and they had pretty much ceased communicating. She hadn't spoken to her elder sister, who is 12 years older than her, for several years. The elder sister, Susan Bergman, wrote a book about their family and their father called Anonymity (1998), which Heche claims not to have read.
"She has always been criticizing. I wrote a movie called Stripping For Jesus and it exposed my ideas of what the family religion was. It's about a girl caught in a cult, so trapped in religion she feels she has to kill someone in order to redeem herself in the eyes of God. The other girl ends up stripping at a club with the scriptures tattooed all over her body. That was my purging." Heche views the kind of fundamentalist Bible-bashing household that she grew up in as devoid of spirituality based on the fear of death and preparing for it. "It's all based on fear. I don't fear much really."
All of her words now seem pretty haunting. She wondered if the world would punish her for falling in love because the world seems to have always punished her in one way or another. And when the world didn't, she did.
I asked her, Do you think this love will last forever. "Yes. Oh Yes."
Are you completely faithful? "After the sex we have, I couldn't even imagine it with anyone else. It's shockingly beautiful and I will fight for it above anything else."
Now, of course, the fight is over. And Anne lost. And while she is wandering into strangers' houses, what's going on inside the head of DeGeneres? A turmoil more contained is not necessarily less heartfelt.Who knows why people can't be together any more? But one thing is for sure. Whether it's heterosexual or gay, it's only love that can tear you apart.
All Degeneres, Heche prove is no relationship is infallible
By Tom Long
(The Detroit News, 2.September 2000)Any high-profile romantic relationship between a movie star and a television star is going to cause some commotion. But the romance between Ellen Degeneres and Anne Heche was something else.
Degeneres, 42, and Heche, 31, were, for three-and-a-half years, the most celebrated, denounced, loved, hated, controversial, camera-shy, camera-hungry lesbian couple in history.
That ended two weeks ago when the couple announced they were calling it quits.
Has this caused heartbreak in the ranks of Ellen's admirers?
Not quite, apparently. "I think there are a lot of lesbians who are very happy, who are very hopeful that they stand a chance now with Ellen," says Amy Blake, owner of A Woman's Prerogative bookstore in Ferndale. "That's the word I hear out on the street."
Following the breakup, news came from California that Heche had been found wandering disoriented near Fresno. She was apparently hospitalized, then released to return to the set of a film.
No matter that her producer said she was suffering from sunstroke, doubters likely cried, see -- she's been messed up all along.
Then both the New York Post and the Daily News reported a few days ago that the reason Heche broke up with Degeneres was a man.
The papers couldn't quite agree on who that man was, but no matter. By week's end the tabloids will have linked Heche up with Charlton Heston, Regis Philbin and a pastry chef.
Imagine the homophobes chanting: "Yahoo, she's ungay! She's ungay! She's ungay!"
In some minds, all of this likely undermines the courage that Ellen Degeneres showed when she came out while the star of a major network television show. For some, it probably proves same-sex relationships are doomed, and people in such relationships just need help.
Well, hooey.
First off, for all anybody knows these two people broke up because one hated garlic bagels. Besides, straight people break up all the time and nobody predicts the end of heterosexuality.
Beyond that, nothing of substance has been reported about what Heche was doing in Central California or whether she is actually involved in another romantic relationship.
And even if she is, and even if it is with a guy, who cares? Does it really matter?
"Sexuality is very fluid," says Blake, who is also a therapist in the lesbian community. "There's a lot of pressure to identify as straight or gay. But if being gay or being straight is organic, then so is being bisexual."
Furthermore, Blake says Degeneres' stature in the lesbian community is secure.
"I think a lot of people can identify with her struggle (of) coming out," she says. "At first she didn't want to be a role model, she didn't want to be an activist. She's a new breed of activist. She's not chained to city hall, she's just out there living her life."
And that life, like all others, will have ups and down. But the fluctuations of a life do not necessarily undercut the accomplishments.
We can't know the truth about Ellen Degeneres' love life, and we certainly don't need to. But that she has one, and she's proud of it ... that's important.
What did we expect from them?
By Victoria Price
(From The Advocate, 24. Oktober 2000)Anne and Ellen and Julie and Melissa lived in our spotlight and carried our burdens. Now it’s time to find our own way.
From George Washington to John Wayne, America is a country built on heroes—men and women who have modeled our greatness, mirrored our potential, and manifested our myths. Perhaps this is because our nation is a product of its own imagination. Built from scratch, having defined itself both by what it was not (an oppressive Old World monarchy) and by what it hoped to be, America invented its New World icons from the fabric of its dreams.
Like America, we gays and lesbians have defined ourselves both by what we are not and by what we wish to be. Our history too is peopled with icons. In the past we honored heroes and heroines who represented our struggles and embodied our strengths—from tragic figures on an epic scale, like Oscar Wilde, who were persecuted for their sexual orientation to larger-than-life rebels like the Stonewall queens, whose anger spurred them to defy unfair laws and fight for their right to love.
Lately, however, things have changed. The Oprahfication of America has spawned a new kind of icon: the simpatico celebrity, rich and famous but also down-to-earth, approachable, real, willing to admit their flaws. Virtually gone is the hero on a grand scale, replaced by someone a lot like any one of us, except maybe prettier, handsomer, or more talented—and generally with a bigger bank account. As homosexuality has found wider tolerance and even acceptance in mainstream society, our gay icons have undergone a similar transformation. Successful and celebrated in both the gay and straight worlds, they even fall in love, have children, and live happily ever after.
Ellen and Anne and Melissa and Julie have been just such role models. These popular celebrities not only proved to the straight world that gays and lesbians are entitled to and can create loving, lasting relationships, but they also acquired marvelous allies like Betty DeGeneres and David Crosby, who became straight ambassadors of gay goodwill. Even more important, these two couples showed the gay world that, despite the lack of support so many of us have suffered, we deserve and are capable of finding happiness with another person.
The only problem with icons is that they are human: Just when we have placed them safely on a pedestal far above the din of daily life, they disappoint us by tumbling down. When Charles and Diana split up, millions of people the world over experienced profound sadness, disbelief, betrayal, and even rage. Having projected so much onto two strangers, the world literally mourned the dissolution of their love affair. In recent weeks the breakups of these two lesbian couples have left many gay people similarly distraught. In one sense, it feels like hearing about the breakup of close friends. But in another sense, it is much, much bigger.
In the early days of American history, the Old World watched and waited for our infant nation to crumble. Our early leaders bore the weight of this scrutiny, so the qualities for which they were lauded had to be unassailable—honesty, wisdom, integrity, charity. For 200 years, to be an American hero was to be mythicized as being almost biblically good. Flaws were hidden, failures overlooked or ignored. So when it was recently confirmed that Thomas Jefferson, one of our greatest champions for human rights, had fathered an illegitimate child with one of his slaves, how were we to reconcile this imperfect patriarch with the handsome hero of our history books?
Scrutinized, criticized, and often ostracized for loving the same sex, gays and lesbians too have needed heroes that we believed to be of unassailable integrity. Now we demand that our celebrities shoulder that burden, saddling them with our hopes and the heavy weight of our often unreal expectations. Not only did we ask Melissa and Julie, Anne and Ellen to legitimize us to the world, but through them we also found the fortitude to believe in our own claim on love and joy. All this they bore with unyielding good grace—and who can tell what strain it wrought? But when the events of their own lives came to supersede their responsibility to us as role models—as inevitably they must—the gay community felt abandoned, forced to come to terms with an event that shook us to the core but really has nothing to do with us.
In the end, role models cannot do our work for us. If they carry the load or light the way, it should be only until we find the courage to do our part. Now is the time to take the energy we have invested in others and use it to strengthen our own relationships, forge our own alliances, create our own families, and build a stronger community. With sadness and with empathy, wishing Anne and Ellen and Julie and Melissa the strength they need to begin this new chapter in their lives, we too must move on.