Actress Anne Heche reportedly suffered severe burns after her car crashed into a Los Angeles house on Friday morning.
According to a statement from the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), “a solo passenger vehicle struck and came to rest well within a 738 square foot two-story home in the Mar Vista neighbourhood, causing structural compromise and erupting in heavy fire prior to LAFD arrival.”
“Fifty-nine firefighters took 65 minutes to access, confine and fully extinguish the stubborn flames within the heavily damaged structure,” the statement published on their website said.
The LAFD added that they rescued one female adult found within the vehicle, who was taken to an area hospital in critical condition by LAFD Paramedics.
The LAFD told Global News they could not provide further information about the woman involved in the incident due to privacy reasons.
Media outlets such as CNN, Los Angeles Times and CBS suggested that the person involved was 53-year-old actress Anne Heche.
Later in the day, a spokeswoman for the actress confirmed that Heche was in an accident in which her car smashed into a house and flames erupted.
“Anne is currently in stable condition. Her family and friends ask for your thoughts and prayers and to respect her privacy during this difficult time,” Heather Duffy Boylston, Heche’s friend and podcast partner, said in a statement.
Television news video showed a blue Mini Cooper Clubman, badly damaged and burned, being towed out of the home, with a woman sitting up on a stretcher and struggling as firefighters put her in an ambulance.
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No other injuries were reported, and no arrests have been made. Police detectives are investigating.
A native of Ohio, Heche first came to prominence on the NBC soap opera “Another World” from 1987 to 1991. She won a Daytime Emmy Award for the role.
In the late 1990s she became one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, a constant on magazine covers and in big-budget films. She co-starred with Johnny Depp in 1997’s “Donnie Brasco”; with Tommy Lee Jones in 1997’s “Volcano”; with Harrison Ford in 1998’s “Six Days, Seven Nights”; with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix in 1998’s “Return to Paradise,” and with an ensemble cast in the original 1997 “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
Her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres from 1997 to 2000 heightened her fame and brought immense public scrutiny.
In the fall of 2000 soon after the two broke up, Heche was hospitalized after knocking on the door of a stranger in a rural area near Fresno, California. Authorities said she had appeared shaken and disoriented, and spoke incoherently to the residents.
In a memoir released the following year, “Call Me Crazy,” Heche talked about her lifelong struggles with mental health and a childhood of abuse.
She was married to camera operator Coleman Laffoon from 2001 to 2009. The two had a son together. She had another son during a relationship with actor James Tupper, her co-star on the TV series “Men In Trees.”
Heche has worked consistently in smaller films, on Broadway, and on TV shows in the past two decades. She recently had recurring roles on the network series “Chicago P.D.” and “All Rise,” and in 2020 was a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars.”
“Better Together,” the podcast hosted by Heche and Duffy Boylston, is described online as a celebration of friendship.
— With files from The Associated Press
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
