Anne Heche's mother, Nancy Heche, has had an incredibly tragic life. Even before her actress-daughter's death on Friday, the 85-year-old author had lost three of her other children. Her husband, who was secretly gay during their marriage, also died.
Prior to Anne's birth, her sister Cynthia died at just 2 months old from a rare heart defect. Much later, Nancy's 18-year-old son was killed in a car wreck. The tragedy took place just months after Nancy lost her husband, Don, to AIDS. And in 2006, Anne's sister Susan died from brain cancer.
Now, after Anne's untimely death last week, Nancy's only living child is her daughter Abigail.
It has certainly not been an easy life for Nancy Heche. She's documented many of her struggles in her religious writings, including the death of her husband, who died of AIDs in the early 1980s. She wrote a memoir about living with a secretly gay partner in 2006, entitled, The Truth Comes Out: When Someone You Love Is in a Same-Sex Relationship.
Nancy is a deeply religious Christian psychologist. The Bible seems to take precedence in her teachings and her counseling sessions. When her daughter Anne told her she had fallen in love with comedian Ellen DeGeneres, Nancy was enraged.
The year was 1997, and while hatred for homosexuality was common, Anne's mother didn't hold back about how she felt. “I am plummeted into disbelief and outrage,” she wrote. “I am dumbfounded, in a state of shock. Doesn’t Anne know what homosexuality has done to our family?” she continued, referring to her husband's secret life.
Anne and Ellen dated for three years. While they were in love for a time, Anne would later claim that the relationship destroyed her life in myriad ways. “It changed my life forever,” she told Page Six in 2020. “The stigma attached to that relationship was so bad … I didn’t do a studio picture for 10 years. I was fired from a $10 million picture deal.”
In a 2021 podcast, Anne really opened up about what went wrong in the relationship. "I broke up with her because her goal was to have a lot of money," Anne revealed. "Mine was to find love, and hers was, 'I want $60 billion.'"
The breakup was undoubtedly painful, but perhaps even more painful was that Anne never had her mother's support, in life or in love. Anne revealed in her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, that she and her mother had a turbulent relationship. That may have been especially true because her mother never believed that Anne's father molested her from the time she was a toddler.
Meanwhile, Nancy felt bitter about Anne's love life. Nancy revealed that Anne's relationship with Ellen was like salt in old wounds and brought up painful memories of her husband's lies. She revealed that she never knew he was gay until he was dying of AIDs, and suddenly it "clicked."
“The dots connect like a stick of dynamite — the fuse sizzling toward explosion. I realize I have been lied to my entire married life.”
