Perhaps life in the spotlight is not really more tragic, only more public.
Just a few months ago, Anne Heche, 31, and Ellen DeGeneres, 42, were singing each other’s praises at the premiere of HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk II. Like any show business power couple, they held hands and joint interviews, finishing each other’s sentences, trying to express the same thought, reported Mrshowbiz.com.
That night, reporters asked what would the walls say if the walls of their $3.5 million LA pad could talk, more than three years after going very public?
“They’d be saying that we are very excited and we’re very happy and in love three years later,” DeGeneres said according to Mrshowbiz.
“Yeah,” Heche agreed. “We’re very lucky women, that we get to have what we have.”
“It’s a celebration every single day,” DeGeneres continued. “It’s kind of disgusting and crazy that we’re like … Oh, we’re so lucky.”
“Yeah,” Heche butted in. “We’re lucky, we’re so lucky.”
The HBO movie was, at least in part, a bit of wish fulfillment. Heche directed DeGeneres and Sharon Stone in a segment about a lesbian couple trying to have a baby. In the months leading up to that interview, they spoke openly about wanting to have kids. Heche even told TV Guide that she hoped to be the one to carry the child.
And DeGeneres proclaimed her love for Heche, reflecting on the death of Princess Diana and the frailty of life. “If Anne goes, I want to go,” she said. “That’s how strongly I feel.”
Yet just 3 1/2 years after Heche announced her love for DeGeneres on Oprah, it all came apart, like so many other show business love affairs. On Saturday came a report in the New York Daily News of their relationship ending, and only hours later, a shaken and incoherent Heche was taken to hospital.
Heche was hospitalized in the central California city of Fresno after walking into a rural home in a confused state, according to police.
"It was sunstroke, that makes you a little dizzy. No drugs," said producter Mark Burg to Reuters, after media speculated the 31-year-old actress was under the influence of drugs. "She was in a convertible and ran out of gas. So she was in the sun too long. Her neck and shoulders are still badly, badly burned," the producer told Reuters.
Earlier media releases also left the impression the incident was connected with the publicity surrounding the well-publicized break-up of Heche and DeGeneres. The couple had said the parting was "amicable".
Burg will be producing a movie Heche is currently working on. The film John Q stars Denzel Washington. She plays a hospital administrator who refuses to treat Washington's 10-year-old son because he does not have medical insurance. Washington takes over the emergency room, holding the operating team hostage.
Filming in Toronto — where all Canadians have publicly funded medical coverage — will take about two months.
Getting back to the main point, like much of their relationship, news of Heche and DeGeneres’s split came by way of tabloid.
“Unfortunately, we have decided to end our relationship,” the actresses said in a statement in the Daily News. “It is an amicable parting, and we greatly value the 3 1/2 years we have spent together. We hope everyone will respect our privacy through this difficult time.”
The parting doesn’t have anything to do with a third party, a source told the paper. “The relationship just ran its course … It wasn’t working.”
DeGeneres reportedly is living in the couple’s Hollywood Hills home, while Heche has been “staying with friends”-Albawaba.com (various sources)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
