Actress Anne Heche declared brain-dead, organs to be donated

LOS ANGELES • Actress Anne Heche, who had been in a coma since a car crash on Aug 5, has been declared brain-dead and is being kept alive on life support to see if her organs are viable for donation, one of her representatives said on Friday.

Ms Heche, 53, was critically injured when she crashed the Mini Cooper she was driving into a home in the Mar Vista neighbourhood of Los Angeles, the authorities said.

She suffered a severe anoxic brain injury and was being treated at the Grossman Burn Centre at West Hills Hospital, according to a statement released on behalf of her family and friends on Thursday night. "It has long been her choice to donate her organs and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable," the statement said.

The declaration of brain death came on Thursday night, the representative, Ms Holly Baird, said. But "her heart is still beating" on life support, said Ms Baird on Friday. The search for possible organ recipients could take a few days, even as Ms Heche's family and friends put out statements of grief.

"Today we lost a bright light, a kind and most joyful soul, a loving mother, and a loyal friend," her friends and family said in a statement released by Ms Baird. "Anne will be deeply missed but she lives on through her beautiful sons, her iconic body of work, and her passionate advocacy."

The crash started a fire that took 59 firefighters more than an hour to extinguish, the Los Angeles Fire Department said. Ms Heche was the only person in the car.

Mr Jeff Lee, a public information officer with the Los Angeles Police, said an initial blood sample drawn from Ms Heche at the hospital had revealed "the presence of drugs", but he did not say what kind. He said a second test was needed to rule out any substances administered by hospital staff but those results could take weeks.

In 1991, Ms Heche won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding younger actress in a drama series, for playing good and evil twins on the NBC soap opera Another World. She starred in several popular Hollywood films in the late 1990s, including Donnie Brasco and Six Days Seven Nights.

She continued to have television roles, including on Men In Trees in 2006 and Hung in 2009, and also performed on Broadway, starring in Proof in 2002 and Twentieth Century in 2004, for which she received a Tony nomination.

In his review of Twentieth Century, Mr Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote of Ms Heche's portrayal of Lily Garland: "Her posture melting between serpentine seductiveness and a street fighter's aggressiveness, her voice shifting between supper-club velvet and dime store vinyl, Heche summons an entire gallery of studio-made sirens from the Depression era: Jean Harlow, the pre-mummified Joan Crawford and, yes, Carole Lombard, who famously portrayed Lily in Howard Hawks' screen version of Twentieth Century."

She had several projects that are in post-production, according to IMDb, including Supercell, a movie with Alec Baldwin, and the HBO show The Idol. She had recently finished filming on Girl In Room 13, a Lifetime movie that is scheduled to premiere in September, Variety reported.

NYTIMES