The 85-year-old mother of Anne Heche’s Christian psychologist had already outlived three of her five children and her husband before her actress daughter’s tragic death on Friday.
The ‘Six Days, Seven Nights’ star was pronounced dead on August 12 at the age of 53, a week after she was involved in multiple car accidents. Heche first sped into an apartment building garage, then sped into a house in her blue Mini Cooper, leaving her “severely burned” and “intubated” at a hospital.
Tragedy swept Anne Heche’s family, beginning with the death of her sister Cynthia Heche in infancy due to a heart condition, the death of patriarch Donald Heche from AIDS in 1983, and later that same year brother Nathan Heche was killed in a car accident in New jersey at 18
In 2006, Heche’s eldest sister, Susan, died at the age of 48 from complications of a brain tumor.
The actress’ troubled relationship with her family first came to public attention after the release of her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy.
Anne Heche with her mother Nancy at the premiere of the film Six Days, Seven Nights in 1997
The Heche family in 1970, left to right, Susan Heche, Nancy Heche, Donald Heche, Nathan Heche, Abigail Heche, and Anne Heche
A later picture of the Heche family, left to right, Nancy, Abigail, Nathan, Donald and Anne Heche
In the book, Heche revealed that she was sexually abused by her father, Donald, when she was young. She also claimed that he gave her genital herpes as a result of the abuse.
In response to Heche’s autobiography, Nancy Heche said, “I’m trying to find a place for myself in this writing, a place where, as Anne’s mother, I don’t feel hurt or outraged.”
Both Heche and her older sister, Susan, revealed in their separate books that Donald Heche lived a bizarre double life.
By day he was a closeted homosexual and godly Baptist choirmaster; At night, he left Heche’s mother and four children at home to roam gay bars in their hometown of Aurora, Ohio.
Nancy wrote in her book The Truth Comes Out that during her marriage to Donald, the couple experimented with poppers to invigorate their sex life.
She said: “Don and I used the poppers together. When we first moved to Atlantic City and lived in the house with Don’s “business partner,” we were given some small bottles of the dizzying stuff “to improve our sex lives.”
Nancy continued, “But I’m a very non-gay wife who was persuaded to giggle the poppers as a novelty to our sex lives. It seemed innocent enough. Why should I question him?’
Heche’s mother, Nancy, lectured on the “evils” of homosexuality for years after her husband’s death in 1983
Heche’s other sister, Abigail. She is a jewelry designer from Illinois. Heche said in an interview that she rebuilt her relationship with her sister after years away from each other’s lives
The Heche family matriarch said that after reading an article about the proliferation of poppers in the gay community, she concluded that both her husband and his “business partner” were homosexual.
In 1983, Donald Heche was one of the first people in the United States to be diagnosed with AIDS. He died the same year.
That was not the end of the drama for the family. Anne Heche had long claimed that she was blacklisted in the aftermath of her public lesbian romance with Elle DeGeneres in the early 2000s.
This blacklist appeared to extend to her relationship with her mother.
In 1998, Heche told the Tampa Bay Times that her mother believed their lesbian relationship was a “sin.”
Susan Bergam pictured on her sister’s Instagram page. Bergam died in 2005 after a battle with brain cancer
While Nancy Heche told the Christian Broadcasting Network that she found her daughter’s relationship with Ellen DeGeneres “like a betrayal of an unspoken vow,” We will never have anything to do with homosexuals.
In a separate interview, Nancy told AL.com in 2009 that she felt she didn’t handle her daughter’s coming out in 1997 well.
She said: “I’m sorry I didn’t know how to handle this well. God gave me an opportunity. We had good moments where we tried to connect. We all learned to deal with it. We loved each other; How do you live it out when you have a different opinion?’
Nancy Heche with her daughter Abigail. Alongside her mother, Heche said her sister had distanced herself from her relationship with Ellen, was made public
During the interview, Nancy said she was an “advocate” for “showing love and respect to the gay community.” In the same year as the interview, Nancy spoke at several homophobic conferences across the country.
Nancy also said that she learned from his doctor that her husband was gay. She said: “We fail. We betray each other. It’s a sad story. God had a lot to teach me. We are to act on our healing, not on our wound. I was hurt and felt betrayed.’
She also downplayed any tensions between her and her daughter, saying they had a “typical mother-daughter relationship.” She said: “We connect and we don’t connect. That’s pretty typical. I have a growing relationship, a loving relationship with her. I love her.’
Heche admitted in a 2011 interview with the Daily Telegraph that she had recently started rebuilding her relationship with her sister after a 20-year feud. The ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ star said: ‘She came to visit last week and we are having a wonderful time in our friendship as we grow closer. We’ve both got our stuff over with.’
In that interview, Heche said that she was still estranged from her mother. Heche said that when she once called her mother to confront her, she hung up after her mother said, “Jesus loves you, Anne.”
Heche said, “Forgiveness is a funny word to me. I’m okay with my mom living her life the way she wants to live it, and I’m okay with her not being a part of my life the way I want to live it.”
In 2015, Nancy Heche admitted: “[Anne has] stopped talking to me She has made the decision to cut off communication.’
Thanks to a role in a 2004 TV movie called “Gracie’s Choice,” in which Heche played an abusive alcoholic mother, she told the Los Angeles Times that she came to terms with the idea that her mother didn’t love her.