A well-known director wanted to put Anne Heche back in the closet.
In a newly revealed excerpt from her unfinished memoir “Call Me Anne,” Heche, who died in August at 53 following a fiery car crash, detailed an encounter with Hollywood heavyweight Ivan Reitman shortly after her 1997 romance with Ellen DeGeneres became public.
Heche, who had previously been romantically linked with Lindsey Buckingham and Steve Martin, remembers the conversation taking place in co-star Harrison Ford’s trailer on the set of the 1998 film “Six Days, Seven Nights,” according to People.com.
“[Ford and Reitman] had seen the evening news. Rumors were reported that Ellen and I were pregnant. Our ‘pregnancy’ was everywhere,” Heche wrote. “They showed me this as proof of why this openness about my relationship was becoming a pain in the ass for them. Why, Ivan asked me, can’t I just be like Jodie Foster?”
Anne Heche (left) and Ellen DeGeneres in 1997. Getty Images
Anne Heche in 1991. NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Jodie Foster. Ron Galella Collection via GettyHeche confessed in her memoir to being confused by the “Ghostbusters” director’s comment.
“’Everybody knows it,’ he explained, ‘it’ being her sexuality. ‘She just doesn’t talk about it.’”
Foster didn’t come out — not publicly, anyway — until the 2013 Golden Globe Awards. She was 50 at the time and notably didn’t use the words “gay” or “lesbian.”
Further on in the memoir, set to be released Jan. 24, Heche detailed exactly why she chose to be so open about her relationship with DeGeneres — a decision that impacted her career in a negative way.
“I will tell you why. Because I had lived in a family that was built upon lies. My father hid his sexuality his entire life,” she wrote, alluding to her allegations that her father was a closeted homosexual.
“When I met Ellen and she was open and honest about her sexuality, it was the most attractive and alluring quality in a person that I had ever seen. I was mesmerized by her honesty, and that is why she was the first and only woman that I ever fell in love with,” Heche wrote. “I was in love with a person who had chosen to leverage her very public persona in support of the cause she was standing up for, which was LGBTQ+ rights for everybody on the planet who wanted them.”
Anne Heche’s posthumous memoir will be released Jan. 24. AP
Anne Heche. Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP
Anne Heche in March of 2022. REUTERSHeche and DeGeneres famously split in 2000. In 2001, Heche released her first memoir, “Call Me Crazy,” alleging that her father had sexually abused her. She is survived by two children: Homer, 20, with cameraman Coleman Laffoon, and Atlas, 13, with actor James Tupper (“Big Little Lies”).
Before her death, Heche had been hosting a podcast named “Better Together” with friend Heather Duffy, who wrapped up the unfinished memoir after Heche’s untimely passing.
“She never got credit for the change she created,” Duffy told People. “She is finally free to be as big and bold as she deserves to be.”
