Men in Trees: Anne Heche Is “Playing It Normal”
In an interview with The
New York Times Magazine
Sunday titled “Anne Heche Is Playing It Normal Now,” Heche discussed her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres and her rocky adolescence as the daughter of a sexually abusive gay father.
Heche, who won a Daytime Emmy in 1991 and was nominated again in 2004, was propelled into the spotlight when she began dating Ellen DeGeneres in 1997. Their relationship lasted three years, shortly after which Heche began dating cameraman Coley Laffoon, whom she later married.
Heche’s Times interview highlighted the effect her traumatic childhood had on her as she got older. She contracted herpes as a child from her sexually abusive father, who came out as gay to her family shortly before he died of AIDS complications in 1983. She admitted to the magazine that she has yet to introduce her children to her mother, a professional Christian psychotherapist.
“That she is attempting to change gay people into straight is, in my opinion, a way to keep the truth out,” she said. “My mother preaches to this day the opposite of that core of my life. It is no mistake that she stands up against love.”
Heche believes her childhood may have been what attracted to her DeGeneres.
“My love was so all-consuming for a human being who would tell the truth,” she said about their relationship. “The impact that has on a child who grew up with such shame about who she was, who her father was, the disease he died of, the hatred my mother had for anything gay. And I got to participate in a loving truthful celebration of the way I thought the world should be.”
At the time, some saw Heche’s relationship with DeGeneres as a publicity stunt intended to help her career. However, the relationship actually left her without any prospects for lead roles. Her role in Six Days, Seven Nights was the last one offered to her before her relationship with DeGeneres became public. Heche remains nonplussed at how quickly her film opportunities began to deteriorate.
“How could that destroy my career? I still can’t wrap my head around it,” she said.
Heche has been in a relationship with her Men in Trees costar James Tupper for over two years, but she doesn’t believe in labeling her sexual orientation.
“The message of my life has stayed the same. I think I was a wonderful spokeswoman for the right to love,” she told the magazine.
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