Anne Heche brought wit and bruised strength to supporting parts that did not always give her enough to do. We value her most when a character’s irritation lets us see how much she has been hurt.
Fi1m perspective
In Donnie Brasco (1997), Anne Heche’s Maggie Pistone pushes back against the men’s preoccupations, giving the neglected family some necessary weight. Heche supplies enough hurt and resolve to make her dissatisfaction count, even when the writing leaves little room for it to develop. We were frustrated on her behalf, because the family scenes keep returning to a domestic problem we have already understood. Attanasio gives the criminal company more to work with, and Newell gets more from it. The film deserves our high regard for Al Pacino and Johnny Depp’s uneasy friendship, but Heche makes the weakness of its domestic scenes harder to overlook.
Walking and Talking (1996) made use of her wry wit and bristling energy before the cluster of supporting roles that brought her wider notice in 1997. Alongside Donnie Brasco and Wag the Dog came Volcano and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Six Days Seven Nights (1998) then gave her a major romantic-adventure lead opposite Harrison Ford, while she played Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (1998). Later work shifted towards independent films, television series and voice roles.
That sharpness finds a different setting in Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog (1997), where she plays presidential aide Winifred Ames. It is a useful companion to Donnie Brasco: another supporting role, this time in a comedy whose dialogue and performances earn the laughs. We recommend it with reservations about a satire that is less searching than its confidence suggests. Its strongest comedy comes from Dustin Hoffman treating deception as a production problem.
Heche’s bruised strength is worth noticing even when a film does not give her enough to do with it. That is not a reason to pretend the underwritten parts are richer than they are. Start with Donnie Brasco, but do not expect it to give her the attention she earns.
Biography
Anne Heche was an American actress. She first came to recognition portraying twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love on the soap opera Another World (1987–1991), for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award.
She achieved prominence in the late 1990s with film roles including Maggie Pistone in Donnie Brasco (1997), Winifred Ames in Wag the Dog (1997), and others such as Volcano (1997), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Six Days, Seven Nights (1998). She later appeared in films including Psycho (1998), John Q (2002) and The Other Guys (2010), and in television series including Men in Trees (2006–2008), Hung (2009–2011) and Chicago P.D. (2014). She also voiced Suyin Beifong in The Legend of Korra (2012).
Heche was born on 25 May 1969 in Aurora, Ohio, and died on 11 August 2022.
