The agony and the ecstasy of Anne Heche
In an exclusive face-to-face interview, Anne Heche answers the tough questions about her battle with insanity, her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, her sudden marriage to Coley Laffoon, the abuse she suffered, and whether she still considers herself a gay activist
By Anne Stockwell

Everybody’s dissing Anne Heche, especially after September 11. In one of fate’s pranks, Anne told her story to Barbara Walters just days before the terrorist attacks. Now, against our uncertain future, our fascination with Anne and her memoir, Call Me Crazy, seems the very essence of our self-indulgent past. Yet Anne’s journey still matters to gays and lesbians. When she fell for Ellen DeGeneres, she jumped into our lives as well, and she made twice the noise on our behalf that most gay women would have.

Many gays and lesbians feel that Anne is now trashing all she told us she believed. She came to fame in the gay movement; now she’s talking about being raped by her closeted gay dad? She swore love for a woman; now she claims she was crazy at the time? Anne hotly denies that she means us harm, and she sought this interview to say so. She insists that she can’t be held responsible for the prejudices and preconceptions people bring to her statements. Nor, as you’ll see, is she free of those burdens herself.

How do you think the gay community is feeling about you? Do you feel people are angry with you?
I haven’t felt that, no. Are people angry with me?

Some are.
Well, sure, anything you do in your life, people are going to be angry at you. People were angry at me when I was in love with Ellen, when I broke up with Steve Martin, when I left the soap opera. When you make choices and you’re a public figure, people have reactions.

You were very visible as a gay activist. How has that changed?
When I was with Ellen, I was telling people, “If you come out, it’s gonna be better for you.” But I honestly don’t know that, and I used to say I did.

So how do you identify today?
Call me anything you want—I don’t call me anything. The labeling’s about what makes you feel comfortable.

Let’s talk about Ellen. You describe your relationship as a clean sexual connection with somebody who knew who they were sexually—to exorcise some of those bad old things from your father.
I don’t think consciously it was that—consciously it was Yippee [laughs]. She’s not hiding and I’m not hiding. In that, there was freedom—sexually, mentally, spiritually, on all levels—that I had never experienced.

You said that the first night you made love with her was the best sex you’d ever had.
Hands down.

Why?
I think I was allowed to embrace the masculine side of me for the first time and also enjoy the feminine side of me for the first time. To me, a girl who’s into pleasing men her whole life…it was a great orgasm, it was beautiful, I felt like I was exploring something new, which was awesome. It was not what I always thought it would be, which was touchy-soft love. It was masculine and feminine. It was everything.

When you were with Ellen, the tabloids loved printing rumors about you and your male costars.
I am a monogamous person. And I think the fear that consumed her was not about me. The fear was about a big ghost that’s a story gay women abide by: Do not sleep with straight women.

Because we’ve learned that if you cross the boundary, it’ll come back to bite you. And it did.
But I don’t believe that. I broke up with Ellen because our relationship didn’t work. God, do not diminish this to “I left her because I was not gay.” That makes me so angry because it makes my commitment not truthful!

Predictably, the media is taking the news of your September 1 marriage in a way gays don’t appreciate. USA Today’s reporting was, like, “Anne Heche commits to heterosexuality, marries cameraman.”
How absurd [laughs]. I have been very clear to everybody that just because I’m getting married does not mean I call myself a straight.

If the gay community had hoped for one gesture from you now, it might have been that you wouldn’t marry while gay people still can’t.
Oh, wow, I never even thought about that!

You never thought about it?
About waiting? [Pauses] See, then you’re not taking into consideration where Coley is coming from. He’s a traditional man, and we want to start a family. If I deny him that, I’m denying the relationship I’m in. When Ellen and I took our first vacation, we were on the street, and I went to hold her hand. She said, “I don’t do that.” I said, “That’s interesting—I show affection to the people I’m in love with. If you’re not gonna do that, then you’re discriminating against me.” Do I believe that people of the same sex should be able to get married? Absolutely. But right now, I am in love with a man and I can get married, and that’s a lucky place to be.

I was horrified by the book’s descriptions of your sexual abuse by your father. But gay people do have a question: Statistically it’s heterosexual men, not gay men, who molest girl children. Since your father never told you he was gay, how do you know he was?
Oh, I could see his behavior. My father was a schizophrenic. He lived two complete lives, one as a heterosexual man who directed the choir and had a family and one who went away. We didn’t know what he did until years later. My father was doing things that are attributed to schizophrenia—big [business] deals, delusions of grandeur. Which I also had, so I know there’s a lot of connections with the insanity that I had with my father.

But do you worry that your book will play into people’s misconceptions about abuse?
You can’t say that. People have an individual experience in this life. I do not believe that I fell in love with a woman because I was abused. Although I don’t think it’s a bad reason. [Laughs]

If your baby should grow up to be gay or lesbian, would that be in any way a difficulty for you?
[Laughs] Of course not. [Yells] Of course not! Hasn’t anybody heard anything I’ve ever said? Of course not, my child is free to love who they want to love! Amazing to think that that would even be asked, with all that I’ve said, over and over again for years.

Does it bother you if people think you’re still crazy?
I named my book Call Me Crazy. I understand that people are going to have opinions about me. Does it bother me? No. I know who I am.