American actress and director Anne Celeste Heche condition following her car crash has worsened and is far graver than it appeared over the weekend, a rep for the Emmy-nominated actor has reported to Deadline.
The rep said in a statement:
“At this time Anne is in extreme critical condition she has a significant pulmonary injury requiring mechanical ventilation and burns that require surgical intervention She is in a coma and has not regained consciousness since shortly after the accident.”
The new statement comes two days after Heche’s publicist released an encouraging statement Saturday listing her as being “in stable condition.” Still, Heche’s family at the time asked for “thoughts and prayers.”
On August 5, 2022, Heche was involved in a sequence of two car crashes in the Mar Vista neighbourhood of Los Angeles, first when the Mini Cooper she was driving hit a garage at an apartment complex, and second when she crashed into a house, resulting in a fiery blaze that left her severely burned.
Los Angeles Fire Department later said that the vehicle caused structural compromise to the house and that it took 59 firefighters 65 minutes to extinguish the fire and rescue Heche from the vehicle. At the time of the crash, the homeowner was in the backyard of the house and was not injured.
Video from Los Angeles’ Fox 11 showed Heche being removed from the accident scene. The Los Angeles Fire Department initially said that Heche was in critical condition in a statement released shortly after Heche was transported to a hospital.
On August 7, Heche’s friend Heather Duffy Boylston told the Associated Press that Heche was in stable condition. Law enforcement officials told the Los Angeles Times that Heche was “deemed to be under the influence and acting erratically” at the time of the crashes.
Heche came to recognition portraying Vicky Hudson and Marley Love in the soap opera Another World (1987–1991), which won her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards. She came to prominence in the late 1990s with roles in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco (1997), the disaster film Volcano (1997), the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), the action comedy film Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), and the drama-thriller film Return to Paradise (1998).
Following her portrayal of Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant‘s horror remake film Psycho (1998), which earned her a Saturn Award nomination, Heche went on to have roles in many well-received independent films.
